Hatch Peppers

Have you ever cooked with hatch peppers? I hadn't heard much about them until a few weeks ago when I started seeing them EVERYWHERE in the stores: hatch pepper salsa, hatch pepper jelly, hatch pepper EVERYTHING. Here's an internet picture of the little beauties:


So I wasn't surprised when we got some in our bountiful basket this week. One day I was trying to make a salad and I thought I'd cut one up and see what it tasted like. I cut off the bottom inch and popped it in my mouth and was pleasantly surprised to discover it tasted just like a green pepper--mild and fairly sweet. I chopped up the whole thing, put it in the salad, picked up a bunch of seeds that had fallen out and threw them away and went on my merry way.

Twenty minutes later I itched my eye and when my finger touched my eye, SEARING PAIN!!! I couldn't rinse my eye enough and had to take out my contacts because it felt like they were going to melt onto my eyeball. Apparently they weren't as mild as I thought! I don't know what gives off the heat in those peppers, maybe the seeds, but I cut up one pepper and half of the pepper slices in the salad were very spicy and the others were just mild.

The next morning I got yet another gift from the peppers as I went to put in my contacts and there was still some hatch pepper heat on there. Those suckers have some KICK!