They are not spicy at all. They are vaguely bitter but not spicy. I know I could use habaneros but they used to have a completely different taste to jalapeños. Almost sweeter and smokier?
A recent example I've had of this was making cream of Jalapeno soup. Same recipe each time. Jalapenos bought from the same store, all a similar size, but bought a couple months apart. The first batch had great flavor, very little heat. The second one was much spicier, my GF couldn't eat it (although I loved the second batch more)
I mean I’ve picked jalapeños off the same plant that were in the same level of ripeness with similar levels of corking and had one have near 0 heat and one have insane levels of spice. It’s just a crapshoot.
But I’ve ready the commercial growers have pushed for a milder plant so that the commercial buyers can have more consistency. Don’t know if that’s true.
Yeah, Texas A&M in particular are blamed, though they’re just responding to the fact that most jalapeños are used in making other food products, where consistency is key (edit: over objective piquancy targets).
I could swear the same thing is happening with habaneros. Homegrown habs can melt your face off even if you’re pretty acclimated to bonnets, ghosts, etc. But several fresh ones from the grocery store in recent years made it seem like putting on gloves to process them was a waste of time.
I noticed that with my harvest this year. I like spicy food and some of them were even too hot for me while others it was like "I remembered to add the jalapenos right?"
I make a leek soup and add either pureed grilled jalapenos or artichokes, depending on mood. Or even a can of hatch chilis. Leek soup is good flavor base; staying in the background of other added vegetative flavors
Can you talk a little bit about your recipe please?
There's a small cafe in Goliad called The Blue Quail Deli that has a famous Cream of Jalapeno soup that I'm going to try and mimic. I believe I have a good idea for a starting point but would love to hear what you do to compare what's in my head vs what you actually do.
My thoughts were to make a blonde roux, sauté mirepoix in the roux, add diced jalapenos, and once all the veggies are cooked, add chicken stock. Stir like hell to incorporate. Take everything and put it in the blender to get everything fine as possible. Then back into the pot and add heavy cream.
That's why I prefer serranos. On average they're hotter than jalapenos, but they're more consistent from pepper to pepper. A jalapeno can vary from "This is basically just a bell pepper" to "ohgodwhyyyy", a serrano is almost always "this is a nice green chili".
They're also the perfect balance of heat and flavor. With hotter peppers like habanero, you lose the distinct flavor of the pepper to hit of heat. Serranos still taste peppery. They're my favorite salsa pepper.
Precisely, and also that they don't just take over everything else. I can handle hotter things, but I just don't like when the only thing you taste is burning lol my parents are from the Caribbean and my Dad L O V E S the Matouk's West Indian Hot Pepper Sauce... it's fine, but I just dislike it because you put that in something and that's the only thing you taste - at that point it doesn't even matter what you're eating anymore.
But also I just have a preference for green chilis over red/orange. Like even with bell peppers, I prefer a green bell pepper over red/orange/yellow. I like that herbaceousness "green" flavor vs. the sweeter, fruitier flavor of the red/orange/yellow ones.
With hotter peppers like habanero, you lose the distinct flavor of the pepper to hit of heat
I consider habanero’s that line and others I’d bet consider ghost or something else above habanero as the line. Capsaicin is tricky like that. How much you’ve numbed yourself matters so much
Green and red habaneros have a bit more flavor than orange (as usual, the common one in the US is the worst). It’s an amazing flavor when you get a good one… A wonderful mixture of citrus and berries, like lime, orange, blackberry, raspberry and grapes all at the same time.
This is accurate. I used to buy 2-3 times as many jalapeños as my needs required as I always had so many duds. (I taste test all my peppers before using).
Finally, a Mexican grandma told me to just buy serranos and that’s what I do here in Mexico now.
Oh man I disagree. There's a Mexican place in my hometown that makes these grilled jalapenos that are legit spicier than any serrano I've ever had. They're pretty close to habanero level imo.
My spice tolerance is pretty high but those jalapenos are too spicy for me every single time. Serranos are great
Yep. My neighbors gave me a few jalapeños they grew themselves the other day. Hottest jalapeños I've ever had in my life. Never knew jalapeños could be that spicy. Looked like jalapeño. Tasted like jalapeño. But crazy spicy. More like an habanero. They swear they didn't cross them with other peppers or anything. Grew them with regular jalapeño seeds. I'm still in disbelief those were jalapeños and they were fucking with me, but the taste was totally jalapeño.
Then I had some stuffed jalapeños yesterday from somewhere else. Almost zero heat. They really are inconsistent.
Crossing them would not affect the fruit - it would only affect fruit grown from the crossed seeds. The fruit characteristics are determined by the original plant, not whatever pollinated the flowers.
i recently got carne asada at a local mexican restaurant and it came with a grilled jalapeno. that was the hottest mother fucking jalapeno i’ve had in my LIFE. i can handle heat, but i was legitimately tearing up. i didn’t even know they could be that hot. someone else at my table got one as well and theirs was a complete dud… extremely inconsistent peppers
I ate one in my garden a few years ago and I practically had a capsaicin-induced psychedelic experience. I only ate it because I just had one that tasted like nothing!
It all depends on how they are grown. Try it out yourself, for milder/sweeter jalapeños, grow them in an area with limited sun, moist soil and water often. For spicier jalapeños, grow them in full sun, dryer soil and limit watering. It will make a huge difference.
Idk, I grew a bunch this summer in wet, shady Michigan, and they were hot af. The previous year, they were pretty mild. Same place in my yard and everything.
Same! I'm in Illinois and grew in full sun, pretty dry, and the heat from my peppers were all over the place. Some hat no heat like bell pepper while others were the hottest jalapenos I've ever had.
Blame Ben Villalon. He was the breeder at A&M in the early eighties who crossbred jalapenos to be mild. Salsa makers wanted to be able to better control the hotness of their products and still have the same flavor.
You can pick a few jalapeños from the same plant at the same time and one might be so mild it may as well be a bell pepper and one will be so spicy I’ll question if it’s actually a jalapeño
Even peppers from the same plant can be wildly inconsistent. I grew a few and out of the two dozen or so, almost all were bland, and 3 decided they were going to make me regret being born. Using fresh and keeping the ribs and seeds is usually a good way to ensure at least some consistent heat, but beware as you might get that one who chooses the nuclear option.
Serrano peppers are what these companies should've used instead of screwing with jalapenos. Serranos just have no heat for me and now jalapenos don't either 😭.
I’ve never in my life had a Serrano that wasn’t significantly hotter than a jalapeño. Like, consistently 2-4 times hotter. It’s an objectively hotter breed.
I’ve read that it was a specific thing they were working on for supplying hot sauce companies with a pepper they could better control spice levels with. Not sure how that really works, but someone from /r/spicy could probably explain it.
That’s exactly what it is. Hot sauce and salsa makers use the TAM jalapeño to add jalapeño flavor, then use capsaicin and other extracts to dial in a consistent spiciness. That way when you buy your favorite medium salsa the spiciness will stay consistent. Because so many TAM jalapeños are grown for commercial use they end up in grocery stores.
If they list a scoville, 99% of the time its a lie for marketing.
Scoville testing involves carefully dehydrating the pepper (which concentrates capsaicin,) and then measuring, and is often done on a single pepper.
That means the figure itself is suspect since peppers vary, and I imagine when you're adding multiple 0's to the figure the swings can be huge.
But the even bigger issue is that pretty much any time I see a scoville number, they're listing the peppers number, as if the sauce was 100% that pepper. A, that's not true, its often not even the first ingredient on the bottle, B remember what I said about using dehydrated peppers? Even if it was just pepper, the water in the peppers would lower the scoville rating.
Best real life example is Hot Ones, The Bomb vs The Last Dab. The Bomb is listed at 135,000 scoville, the OG Last Dab is marketed as over 1,000,000 but almost every episode, people react way worse to The Bomb. Well, people tested the actual sauces, and The Bomb was pretty close to its listed scoville, IIRC its first ingredient was actually the pepper they featured. Meanwhile the Last Dab came in sub 100,000.
When companies produce milk they remove all the fat and then add it back to the correct ratio. The milk fat % is inconsistent from tanker to tanker and farm to farm, so it's the only way to get a good, consistent product.
I went with some coworkers to an Indian restaurant that most of them had never been to. I suggested low spice, like 2, or 3 if they were feeling adventurous. I regularly get 3 and sometimes 4. One guy was sweating from his 2 meal and everyone was talking about how spicy it was.
My sister, who “loves spice” was “acknowledging” (or rather sneakily complaining) about the spice level of a dish my uncle made, and asked what he put in it and he just very flatly said “black pepper”. She even fought him on it. Spice is just something a lot of people can’t handle. Hell, I’ve known people who have thought garlic was “too spicy”. It’s wild.
Hell, I’ve known people who have thought garlic was “too spicy”. It’s wild.
Some people have an extremely limited vocabulary to describe the various aspects of food and how it effects them.
I've noticed a ton of people just use the word spicy to cover anything that they cannot physically handle for any reason.
Can't handle the amount of carbonation in a beverage. "Too spicy".
Too much fat in a dish. "Too spicy."
Too acidic and triggering their acid reflux. You guessed it, its "too spicy".
It's why I hate cooking for my mom. Everything is "too spicy" and trying to figure out what she actually means is like trying to read tea leaves held in a death grip by a kid getting their teeth pulled.
There's a ramen place I love, I usually get the karaage rice bowl. When we go in person, I ask for the spicy mayo on the side instead of drizzled on top of everything. After doing this for a few weeks, the guy behind the counter (who was Japanese) was like "you know you don't have to order it on the side, it comes with it drizzled on top".
I said "I know, but the spiciness kind of builds up over the whole bowl if I have it in every bite and it gets a bit too spicy for me".
He called his coworker over and he was like "whoa this guy thinks the spicy mayo is too spicy" and they were both shocked by my low spice tolerance.
Because sometimes you want the flavor without a bunch of heat (say, if you're eating a bunch of them pickled on nachos), and other times you want that heat (in a hot sauce or salsa or something else).
For Mexican and tex-mex, yeah jalapeños and serranos for the fresh pepper flavor. For dried peppers, ancho, arbol, guajillo, and cayenne bring various layers of heat and fruitiness. Chipotle for that smokey heat.
Dry peppers can be livened up by toasting dry in the pan to release the oils before grinding or reconstituting, or added ground to warm oil and allowed to bloom.
Pho typically uses Thai or bird's eye chiles. Korean uses a lot of gochugaru (dried chiles) and gochujang (same chiles, but a fermented paste).
For superhot peppers, I like scorpions. They have good flavor, but a little goes a long way. The tabasco scorpion pepper hot sauce is actually pretty good. A few drops in a batch spices it right up.
I wish i could find spicier ones, but i have come to grips and sometimes like having the milder ones where i can add a lot and get some crunchy pop on the dish without adding too much heat - works well when i make Qeema to add texture and when i make a thai curry that is already pretty hot but want peppers too (Im not a big fan of bell peppers)
I scrolled all the way down hoping someone had cited the Food and Wine article from May 2025, and you did exactly just that already! Thank you for pointing this out. It is a national trend (assuming OP is based in the United States, of course Reddit is a global platform so I have to acknowledge that perhaps OP is not US-based).
But if based in the US, then yes, there is an actual "jalapenos getting milder" trend that is actively being documented by multiple sources-- Food and Wine being just one of them.
As a result, I've been shopping for my jalapenos either organic (which increases more "heat stress" during the cultivation process, which results in a naturally higher capsaicin content therefore a sensation of "more spicy") or I just shop at a local Asian market where the jalapenos might come from China (ALWAYS check the "COOL" or Country Of Origin Label) or more specifically from Fujian or Hangzhou which both cultivate jalapenos.
Hope this helps. This comment will probably get buried, but for someone who may be reading every comment in this (currently massive) Reddit thread maybe this'll help at least one other person.
Was scrolling looking for the same! I think I actually found out about it in this sub awhile back.
To answer OP if you have any Latin markets near you you may have better luck there. Now with the world of tariffs and everything it’s becoming harder and harder to find the good ones that have actual heat…
That's what I came looking for. In my limited experience so far, I THINK the TAM ones are unusually good looking--big, firm, shiny, thick walled, and all around gorgeous, but practically flavorless--like the Red Delicious of peppers. Those danged siren peppers enthralled me with their beauty maybe five or six dozen times before I finally put it together and stopped buying them.
Fortunately, I have a local farm that has really good peppers, so I get my jalapenos there during growing season, and off season I get (relatively) ugly little ones at Mexican groceries.
Hah, after this discussion my daughter agreed to try qeema for dinner so I just bought a handful of those beautiful shiny peppers. She claims to like spicy foods but she taps out above Franks level
I’ve gotten so used to them being mild that when I do get spicy ones I’m thrown off. I went to the bathroom earlier after chopping two peppers and I’ve been fire for a couple of hours now.
In the last year I'd read or heard somewhere that jalapenos were starting to be bred to have lesser heat because they are used often for mass produced snacks.
I heard a couple podcasts (the Spookful being one) that had stories on this. More milder jalapenos are preferred because of their popularity and the consumer demands for different spice spice levels. It's essential and more economical then to have milder peppers and then add in capsaicin to create the different levels of spices versus growing several different varieties of peppers with different capsaicin levels.
There are newer varieties of jalapeños that are less spicy that are available.
Growers have started to prioritize those variants since they’re easier for food processing plants to work with. Food processor plants pretty much just want the raw flavor and then want to be able to control the spice level themselves.
Grocery stores buy up what is available and that more often than not is the less spicy variants.
Embarrassingly, I read way too many of the comments here saying or alluding to this before the processing and supply parts of it clicked. One more reason not to buy processed food.
Depending where you are in Canada, they could all be those same prepackaged tray sold at walmart, roblaws etc that don't taste like anything. Anywhere that sells them loose usually will taste better, if they're not shrivelled sad things that never get purchased in your area. Best have been from these unmanned veggie huts a local farm runs but I get that is privileged and they're closed for the season now.
It’s not the age, they’re stressed from not being watered as much and also getting long hours of full sunlight.
I grow them indoors. The key is to starve them a bit. Just enough water to grow and stay alive. My peppers get about 9 hours of direct (synthetic) sunlight per day. Stressing them causes the scarring and they be hotter. Then you can germinate seeds from your hottest peppers and keep going like that to “breed” them selectively.
Being generous with water will grow plants faster and give a much larger yield, so it’s more profitable! But they won’t be as flavorful and spicy.
Growing jalapenos indoors is really easy and doesn’t take a ton of space. I highly recommend people grow their own. They’re beautiful plants, easy to care for, and over time you’ll master customizing your capsaicin. I grow several varieties of peppers indoors. They are my houseplants, lol.
Try using Serranos instead. Not quite the same flavor, but often more consistent than Jalapenos.
Different seasons and growing regions can influence the heat of Jalapenos and other hot peppers , as others have noted.
By far the tamest seem to be the commercially produced hydroponic ones (usually sold on those foam trays shrink wrapped with glossy plastic in Reduced Oxygen Packaging ROP).
Personally, I always buy the loose ones, which are often more consistent, other than seasonal variations.
There are a ton of commercially viable varieties and the genetic drift is getting pretty wild. The only way to get consistency is to grow your own. An average grocery store will unknowingly stock at least 10 different jalapeño varieties throughout the year.
They've been breeding for jalapenos that have the jalapeno taste, but not the spiciness. This makes it easier for makers of packaged goods to include jalapenos, but to standardize the level of heat by adding it from other sources.
This general trend of labelling very modest amounts of spice with things like "Ghost Pepper" and "Insano-hot" or whatever is super annoying. Who are these people who don't actually like spicy food but want to buy things that are called spicy? Who do they think they are impressing?
Themselves. It’s disingenuous and muddling the quality of actual good hot sauces and peppers. I tried the hot ones last dab and it’s about as hot as a serrano
As most jalapeños are canned or jarred , Jalapeños have been purposely bred to be less spicy with capsaicin added back in the processing to give a consistent level of heat.
You need to be buying the Jalapeños that look like they’ve been tanning and chain smoking for twenty years. If you think your pepper had a killer skin routine it’s white people spicy.
I’ve switched to scotch bonnets and habaneros years ago because they have a sweet, fruity flavors (scotch bonnets) or citrusy floral flavors (habaneros) and a good basic level of heat. Jalapeños have always been pretty mediocre in flavor and the heat is barely detectable… They’re almost interchangeable with green bell peppers.
I absolutely love Jalapeños, they're my favorite peppers. But I don't buy them in stores any more. My wife grows them in the garden, and when they're really ripe, they are great. Half of them are hot AF, and the other half are really mild. I make a paste of them, its delicious!
As a gardener, I can also say there are many strains of jalapeño, some hot and some mild. I grew an heirloom Mexican variety this year that was hotter and smaller than any store bought jalapeño called Zapotec.
Often smaller jalapeños are hotter, and also ones with “corking” is hotter, which are the little brown scar stripes that form on some mature green jalapeños before they ripen to red (or orange or other colors depending on the strain). Also Serrano peppers are similar to jalapeño but hotter and smaller if you have access to them.
When I was young we would challenge each other to eat peice the size of a chocolate chip and our mouths would burn forever.. they seem to be GMOed to be milder and family friendly one step above a green pepper. I cant find a suitable replacement to the old-style habaneros and ghost are spicy but way different taste profile
Tomatoes grown at home are almost a different veggie entirely to the crap in the store. It’s the one I notice the biggest difference when grown at home
It's a purely regional and ecological thing. I know another poster said something about Texas A&M but that isn't even close to the whole story nor is it a relevant part of the supply chain.
I've never liked cooking with jalapenos because they're either basically a bell pepper or way too spicy for the dish. Serranos are much more consistent.
Texas A&M ruined jalapeños by making a hybrid jalapeño and bell pepper to make jalapeños bigger and less spicy. This was driven by commercial demand for less spicy jalapeños to make natural jalapeño flavored products that are less spicy or using extracts to make them more spicy on demand.
So, while the Aggies suck on the football field (11-2 feels like 8-5 BAS), they also suck at agricultural by ruining one of my favorite peppers.
Disclaimer: I'm not an Aggie fan, I'm a fan of the flagship university in Texas simply known as Texas.
Try looking for jalepenos that are specifically labeled 'hot' that's what I've started doing because they can be super inconsistent. Once upon a time I was of the mind that the fresher the hotter. This was due to slicing them up right out of the garden onto a burger and being impressed.
This was not the result times after, but then a random jar I purchased had real heat. I think a part of me died that day.
Jalepenos can be à hit or miss and can be tastier in the summer months. I grow my own and noticed as they mature from green to red they get slightly hotter and sweet.
Another tip is if you pick the peppers with the white creases on the skin those tend to be hotter something I learned from my Uncle
Have you tried to grow your own? Usually my homegrown jalapeños are fairly spicy. My grandparents would say that if you watered them less they’d be spicier. That stressing out the plant yields a spicier pepper
I grow a lot of hot peppers at my vegetable farm and big grocery store peppers just taste like mild pepper flavored water. I’m very biased but this is another question where the answer is buy local and in season if you want quality.
Having worked on a farm that grew jalapenos, depending on how they grow and when you harvest them, the spice level can vary drastically.
At least in my experience if you let them grow to where they start changing from green to red, they get extremely spicy, far spicier than most people expecting a jalapeno would appreciate. Harvest them more early and especially after de-seeding while cooking they have that more acidic bitterness and a more bell peppery-ish taste with subtle spice level
On a tangent, given how popular spicy food is now, it surprises me that you rarely see red jalapenos for sale at grocery stores. I believe there are some canned products with red jalapenos, but I never see them fresh in the produce section, mainly at farmers markets. I think they could do well.
Agreed. I've noticed it for several years. Several peppers that are between a bell pepper & jalapeno on the Scoville scale are now consistently hotter than any grocery store jalapenos. Most of the big seed companies jalapeno seeds are really mild too. Your best bet is to find heirloom seeds & grow your own and can them for use throughout the year.
I was getting sick of inconsistent jalapeños. Occasionally they were the heat I remember, or close to it, but usually they were just glorified green peppers.
What you want to try are called Serranos and they’re fairly common. Similar look and taste to jalapeño but half the size. The heat is consistent, about 1.5x a good jalapeño. So if a “normal” jalapeño wasn’t already too hot for you, these are perfect.
I’d imagine farmers are pushing more water for a more bountiful crop (weight wise). Chile peppers tend to get hotter if the climate they grow in is more arid. Less water, less crop, and less money. These guys don’t care about SHU and may not necessarily care about the flavor. They definitely care about their bottom line.
My roommate grows jalapenos. She abuses them and they’re hot AF but 1/2 the size I see at the grocery store.
Wow. I'm in California, I have had half-assed jalapeños (unless pickled) for the last 10 years and then the last 5 times I've gotten them on a sandwich I've had to take them out because my mouth was on fire.
I clicked this expecting you to say you'd experience the spice level insanity and it's so funny to me it's the opposite.
In my experience, larger jalapeños are less spicy and most grocery stores near me carry massive jalapeños now. I actually really like the flavor of whatever breed these are, but agree they arent spicy anymore.
I live in the American Midwest and have discovered that most grocery store jalapeños are worthless unless you want the jalapeno FLAVOR but no spice. Now, I have discovered that Aldi has amazingly spicey jalapeños always! At least the past 2 or 3 years. If available in your area, try Aldi jalapeños!
I grow Jalapenos in my greenhouse. You can get a sweet or hot or mild fruit from the same plant. They are definitely becoming more unpredictable. I've taken to batch processing and blending together to blend out the peaks and troughs of jalapenos. I'm trying to source heirloom seeds for the coming season because the genetics have reached some kind of evolutionary dead end😂
Chiming in as someone who grows large quantities of jalapeños every year, it’s not just the ones you buy in the store, my homegrown ones have also been getting milder every year! Despite growing the same strain every year, with seeds sourced from the same (organic) seed company, in the same garden location every year, and in weather conditions that obviously vary by year but stay within the same general range of temp/rainfall/hrs of sunlight etc.
5 years ago we could barely eat the jalapeño poppers I’d make as they were so spicy, now even the slightest hint of warmth is unusual. Quite odd.
gracious - i wish i could have sent you some of the peppers i grew in my garden this summer because they were obscenely spicy. i even candied them and they were still spicy as hell.
Selective breeding of jalapeños to ensure uniform size, resistance to bugs, and to ensure uniform heat as requested by food manufacturers has resulted in commercially grown jalapeños being less spicy
Yeah someone mentioned that on another thread a fair while back. Less epicy 😱.. no wonder all the ones ive tried recently (not ones ive grown) felt like little or no spice)
I’ve noticed this too. But I swear those grilled whole jalapeños from the taco truck are so damn spicy every time. Maybe they’re homegrown or something.
Habaneros always seemed fruity to me too, as well as sweet and smoky.
This is exactly why I decided to grow my own jalapeños this last year and oh boy they certainly have consistent heat as long as you look up about what causes the different heat intensities in peppers(neglect)
nutrient leach in soil is making basically everything tasteless. welcome to monoculture farming. we’re making the same mistake as we did in the 1920s, lol. it also is reducing the nutrients in all fruits and veggies so there’s that.
Jalapeños are one of the most inconsistent peppers for heat. Some will be hot AF and others almost no heat.
A recent example I've had of this was making cream of Jalapeno soup. Same recipe each time. Jalapenos bought from the same store, all a similar size, but bought a couple months apart. The first batch had great flavor, very little heat. The second one was much spicier, my GF couldn't eat it (although I loved the second batch more)
Edit for those asking for the recipe:
https://theviewfromgreatisland.com/cream-of-jalapeno-soup-recipe/#wprm-recipe-container-90732
I mean I’ve picked jalapeños off the same plant that were in the same level of ripeness with similar levels of corking and had one have near 0 heat and one have insane levels of spice. It’s just a crapshoot.
But I’ve ready the commercial growers have pushed for a milder plant so that the commercial buyers can have more consistency. Don’t know if that’s true.
Yeah, Texas A&M in particular are blamed, though they’re just responding to the fact that most jalapeños are used in making other food products, where consistency is key (edit: over objective piquancy targets).
I could swear the same thing is happening with habaneros. Homegrown habs can melt your face off even if you’re pretty acclimated to bonnets, ghosts, etc. But several fresh ones from the grocery store in recent years made it seem like putting on gloves to process them was a waste of time.
I noticed that with my harvest this year. I like spicy food and some of them were even too hot for me while others it was like "I remembered to add the jalapenos right?"
I'm glad I'm not the only one who experienced this. I was so confused.
Cream of jalapeno soup, you say??? 🤔🤔🤔🤤🤤🤤🤤
I make a leek soup and add either pureed grilled jalapenos or artichokes, depending on mood. Or even a can of hatch chilis. Leek soup is good flavor base; staying in the background of other added vegetative flavors
Alaska Airlines lounge (in Anchorage airport) sometimes has a fantastic cream of jalapeno.
Yeah, extremely specific scenario but I'm in there too damn much as it is. I don't know what's in it, but everyone always gets it when it's out.
I'll go out on a limb and say jalapenos and cream are in it
Who are you who are so wise in the ways of culinary science?
Right? Drop the recipe!
Check out my edit
Cream of Beat
Edited to add recipe link
Can you talk a little bit about your recipe please?
There's a small cafe in Goliad called The Blue Quail Deli that has a famous Cream of Jalapeno soup that I'm going to try and mimic. I believe I have a good idea for a starting point but would love to hear what you do to compare what's in my head vs what you actually do.
My thoughts were to make a blonde roux, sauté mirepoix in the roux, add diced jalapenos, and once all the veggies are cooked, add chicken stock. Stir like hell to incorporate. Take everything and put it in the blender to get everything fine as possible. Then back into the pot and add heavy cream.
Check my first comment for the recipe
I've been told than when I make my restaurant-style salsa with roasted poblanos instead of jalapenos, it's a better and more consistent heat.
That's why I prefer serranos. On average they're hotter than jalapenos, but they're more consistent from pepper to pepper. A jalapeno can vary from "This is basically just a bell pepper" to "ohgodwhyyyy", a serrano is almost always "this is a nice green chili".
They're also the perfect balance of heat and flavor. With hotter peppers like habanero, you lose the distinct flavor of the pepper to hit of heat. Serranos still taste peppery. They're my favorite salsa pepper.
Precisely, and also that they don't just take over everything else. I can handle hotter things, but I just don't like when the only thing you taste is burning lol my parents are from the Caribbean and my Dad L O V E S the Matouk's West Indian Hot Pepper Sauce... it's fine, but I just dislike it because you put that in something and that's the only thing you taste - at that point it doesn't even matter what you're eating anymore.
But also I just have a preference for green chilis over red/orange. Like even with bell peppers, I prefer a green bell pepper over red/orange/yellow. I like that herbaceousness "green" flavor vs. the sweeter, fruitier flavor of the red/orange/yellow ones.
I consider habanero’s that line and others I’d bet consider ghost or something else above habanero as the line. Capsaicin is tricky like that. How much you’ve numbed yourself matters so much
Green and red habaneros have a bit more flavor than orange (as usual, the common one in the US is the worst). It’s an amazing flavor when you get a good one… A wonderful mixture of citrus and berries, like lime, orange, blackberry, raspberry and grapes all at the same time.
This is accurate. I used to buy 2-3 times as many jalapeños as my needs required as I always had so many duds. (I taste test all my peppers before using).
Finally, a Mexican grandma told me to just buy serranos and that’s what I do here in Mexico now.
Serranos are also way spicier than any jalapeno you will eat.
Even the spicy jalapenos do not compare. Just saying this for folks who buy them without knowing.
Oh man I disagree. There's a Mexican place in my hometown that makes these grilled jalapenos that are legit spicier than any serrano I've ever had. They're pretty close to habanero level imo.
My spice tolerance is pretty high but those jalapenos are too spicy for me every single time. Serranos are great
Yep. My neighbors gave me a few jalapeños they grew themselves the other day. Hottest jalapeños I've ever had in my life. Never knew jalapeños could be that spicy. Looked like jalapeño. Tasted like jalapeño. But crazy spicy. More like an habanero. They swear they didn't cross them with other peppers or anything. Grew them with regular jalapeño seeds. I'm still in disbelief those were jalapeños and they were fucking with me, but the taste was totally jalapeño.
Then I had some stuffed jalapeños yesterday from somewhere else. Almost zero heat. They really are inconsistent.
Crossing them would not affect the fruit - it would only affect fruit grown from the crossed seeds. The fruit characteristics are determined by the original plant, not whatever pollinated the flowers.
i recently got carne asada at a local mexican restaurant and it came with a grilled jalapeno. that was the hottest mother fucking jalapeno i’ve had in my LIFE. i can handle heat, but i was legitimately tearing up. i didn’t even know they could be that hot. someone else at my table got one as well and theirs was a complete dud… extremely inconsistent peppers
I ate one in my garden a few years ago and I practically had a capsaicin-induced psychedelic experience. I only ate it because I just had one that tasted like nothing!
It all depends on how they are grown. Try it out yourself, for milder/sweeter jalapeños, grow them in an area with limited sun, moist soil and water often. For spicier jalapeños, grow them in full sun, dryer soil and limit watering. It will make a huge difference.
Idk, I grew a bunch this summer in wet, shady Michigan, and they were hot af. The previous year, they were pretty mild. Same place in my yard and everything.
Same! I'm in Illinois and grew in full sun, pretty dry, and the heat from my peppers were all over the place. Some hat no heat like bell pepper while others were the hottest jalapenos I've ever had.
I grew my own jalepenos once and they tasted like satans butthole, the next year they were basically bell peppers
Blame Ben Villalon. He was the breeder at A&M in the early eighties who crossbred jalapenos to be mild. Salsa makers wanted to be able to better control the hotness of their products and still have the same flavor.
Now the variety is widespread.
Actually learned about that last night from The Food that Built America
Shishito peppers are the same. Like paying Russian roulette.
I grow jalapeños in my garden, and it’s crazy.
You can pick a few jalapeños from the same plant at the same time and one might be so mild it may as well be a bell pepper and one will be so spicy I’ll question if it’s actually a jalapeño
Serranos are solid
Even peppers from the same plant can be wildly inconsistent. I grew a few and out of the two dozen or so, almost all were bland, and 3 decided they were going to make me regret being born. Using fresh and keeping the ribs and seeds is usually a good way to ensure at least some consistent heat, but beware as you might get that one who chooses the nuclear option.
Texas A&M selectively bred a variety that isn’t spicy and it’s taken over.
Edit: https://www.southernliving.com/jalapenos-are-less-spicy-11768631
Well that sucks. If I wanted a green pepper that wasn’t spicy, I would just buy bell peppers
Try serranos. Not super spicy but kinda what jalapeños used to be
Way more consistent heat levels with Serranos ime
You know what would be good though? A really mild serrano pepper. Any geneticists here?
Don’t you dare
Serrano peppers are what these companies should've used instead of screwing with jalapenos. Serranos just have no heat for me and now jalapenos don't either 😭.
I’ve never in my life had a Serrano that wasn’t significantly hotter than a jalapeño. Like, consistently 2-4 times hotter. It’s an objectively hotter breed.
Your right. I'm thinking of poblanos. 🤦
Poblano peppers are good for a flavorful, slightly spicey pepper without being overly expensive.
I've never gotten heat from poblanos, great flavor though.
The ones I grow myself can get hot at the end of the season. I always forget and go to eat them like I do the rest of the year, and end up surprised.
Maybe you’re just more hardcore than me.
ha! I always roast them so maybe that has something to do with it.
I fucking love poblanos.
Poblanos have less heat than even the mildest jalapeño though
I use to poblanos any time you would normally use green bell peppers. I notice they have a more interesting flavor and seem to add more to any dish
Grow your own. Hot peppers freeze really well.
Damn aggies...
Didn’t know I needed another reason to hate Texas A&M
Why tho?
I’ve read that it was a specific thing they were working on for supplying hot sauce companies with a pepper they could better control spice levels with. Not sure how that really works, but someone from /r/spicy could probably explain it.
That’s exactly what it is. Hot sauce and salsa makers use the TAM jalapeño to add jalapeño flavor, then use capsaicin and other extracts to dial in a consistent spiciness. That way when you buy your favorite medium salsa the spiciness will stay consistent. Because so many TAM jalapeños are grown for commercial use they end up in grocery stores.
I listened to a podcast on this, they want the flavor of jalapeno and consistently low spice and then they add pure capsaicin to spice to their needs
Was it the sporkful?? Here’s a link to the episode if anyone else is interested! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sporkful/id350709629?i=1000708975789
That does make sense .if a company is claiming soecific sciville units its probably be much easier for them if the peppers were consistent
If they list a scoville, 99% of the time its a lie for marketing.
Scoville testing involves carefully dehydrating the pepper (which concentrates capsaicin,) and then measuring, and is often done on a single pepper.
That means the figure itself is suspect since peppers vary, and I imagine when you're adding multiple 0's to the figure the swings can be huge.
But the even bigger issue is that pretty much any time I see a scoville number, they're listing the peppers number, as if the sauce was 100% that pepper. A, that's not true, its often not even the first ingredient on the bottle, B remember what I said about using dehydrated peppers? Even if it was just pepper, the water in the peppers would lower the scoville rating.
Best real life example is Hot Ones, The Bomb vs The Last Dab. The Bomb is listed at 135,000 scoville, the OG Last Dab is marketed as over 1,000,000 but almost every episode, people react way worse to The Bomb. Well, people tested the actual sauces, and The Bomb was pretty close to its listed scoville, IIRC its first ingredient was actually the pepper they featured. Meanwhile the Last Dab came in sub 100,000.
They do this with milk too.
When companies produce milk they remove all the fat and then add it back to the correct ratio. The milk fat % is inconsistent from tanker to tanker and farm to farm, so it's the only way to get a good, consistent product.
Because the brutal truth is most Americans have a very low spice tolerance, and they want to sell peppers everyone can eat.
I went with some coworkers to an Indian restaurant that most of them had never been to. I suggested low spice, like 2, or 3 if they were feeling adventurous. I regularly get 3 and sometimes 4. One guy was sweating from his 2 meal and everyone was talking about how spicy it was.
My sister, who “loves spice” was “acknowledging” (or rather sneakily complaining) about the spice level of a dish my uncle made, and asked what he put in it and he just very flatly said “black pepper”. She even fought him on it. Spice is just something a lot of people can’t handle. Hell, I’ve known people who have thought garlic was “too spicy”. It’s wild.
Some people have an extremely limited vocabulary to describe the various aspects of food and how it effects them.
I've noticed a ton of people just use the word spicy to cover anything that they cannot physically handle for any reason.
Can't handle the amount of carbonation in a beverage. "Too spicy".
Too much fat in a dish. "Too spicy."
Too acidic and triggering their acid reflux. You guessed it, its "too spicy".
It's why I hate cooking for my mom. Everything is "too spicy" and trying to figure out what she actually means is like trying to read tea leaves held in a death grip by a kid getting their teeth pulled.
I knew a woman who thought that ketchup was too spicy.
Why yes, she was white, how did you know?
Why is that a brutal truth?
There's a ramen place I love, I usually get the karaage rice bowl. When we go in person, I ask for the spicy mayo on the side instead of drizzled on top of everything. After doing this for a few weeks, the guy behind the counter (who was Japanese) was like "you know you don't have to order it on the side, it comes with it drizzled on top".
I said "I know, but the spiciness kind of builds up over the whole bowl if I have it in every bite and it gets a bit too spicy for me".
He called his coworker over and he was like "whoa this guy thinks the spicy mayo is too spicy" and they were both shocked by my low spice tolerance.
=(
Because sometimes you want the flavor without a bunch of heat (say, if you're eating a bunch of them pickled on nachos), and other times you want that heat (in a hot sauce or salsa or something else).
It's good to have choices.
Arent there other peopers that provide flavor but less heat tho? No need to reengineer the ja-lop-anno
I've been using Serranos in place of jalepenos
Thanks! This is what I was looking for. Any other substitute suggestions? I primarily use them for tacos, chili, and garnish for soups (pho, etc.).
For Mexican and tex-mex, yeah jalapeños and serranos for the fresh pepper flavor. For dried peppers, ancho, arbol, guajillo, and cayenne bring various layers of heat and fruitiness. Chipotle for that smokey heat.
Dry peppers can be livened up by toasting dry in the pan to release the oils before grinding or reconstituting, or added ground to warm oil and allowed to bloom.
Pho typically uses Thai or bird's eye chiles. Korean uses a lot of gochugaru (dried chiles) and gochujang (same chiles, but a fermented paste).
For superhot peppers, I like scorpions. They have good flavor, but a little goes a long way. The tabasco scorpion pepper hot sauce is actually pretty good. A few drops in a batch spices it right up.
Serranos are really the only good 1:1 replacement for jalapeños but poblanos are also very tasty, not as spicy as serranos but very flavorful.
Blame salsa and Texas A&M: https://www.foodandwine.com/why-jalapenos-have-become-less-spicy-11740201.
I wish i could find spicier ones, but i have come to grips and sometimes like having the milder ones where i can add a lot and get some crunchy pop on the dish without adding too much heat - works well when i make Qeema to add texture and when i make a thai curry that is already pretty hot but want peppers too (Im not a big fan of bell peppers)
I scrolled all the way down hoping someone had cited the Food and Wine article from May 2025, and you did exactly just that already! Thank you for pointing this out. It is a national trend (assuming OP is based in the United States, of course Reddit is a global platform so I have to acknowledge that perhaps OP is not US-based).
But if based in the US, then yes, there is an actual "jalapenos getting milder" trend that is actively being documented by multiple sources-- Food and Wine being just one of them.
This was also pointed out by Dallas Magazine back in 2023: https://www.dmagazine.com/food-drink/2023/05/why-jalapeno-peppers-less-spicy-blame-aggies/
And just last month in November 2025 by The Takeout: https://www.thetakeout.com/2009111/why-jalapenos-less-spicy/
As a result, I've been shopping for my jalapenos either organic (which increases more "heat stress" during the cultivation process, which results in a naturally higher capsaicin content therefore a sensation of "more spicy") or I just shop at a local Asian market where the jalapenos might come from China (ALWAYS check the "COOL" or Country Of Origin Label) or more specifically from Fujian or Hangzhou which both cultivate jalapenos.
Hope this helps. This comment will probably get buried, but for someone who may be reading every comment in this (currently massive) Reddit thread maybe this'll help at least one other person.
This is a good listen too: Decoder Ring: How the Jalapeño Lost Its Heat
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-the-jalape%C3%B1o-lost-its-heat/id1376577202?i=1000654895649
As annoyed as I am by this, I do appreciate that the guy involved at the university has the nickname Dr Pepper though.
DOCTOR PEPPER
im ded.
no but seriously thanks for sharing this, i'll give it a listen
Was scrolling looking for the same! I think I actually found out about it in this sub awhile back.
To answer OP if you have any Latin markets near you you may have better luck there. Now with the world of tariffs and everything it’s becoming harder and harder to find the good ones that have actual heat…
That's what I came looking for. In my limited experience so far, I THINK the TAM ones are unusually good looking--big, firm, shiny, thick walled, and all around gorgeous, but practically flavorless--like the Red Delicious of peppers. Those danged siren peppers enthralled me with their beauty maybe five or six dozen times before I finally put it together and stopped buying them.
Fortunately, I have a local farm that has really good peppers, so I get my jalapenos there during growing season, and off season I get (relatively) ugly little ones at Mexican groceries.
Hah, after this discussion my daughter agreed to try qeema for dinner so I just bought a handful of those beautiful shiny peppers. She claims to like spicy foods but she taps out above Franks level
I’ve gotten so used to them being mild that when I do get spicy ones I’m thrown off. I went to the bathroom earlier after chopping two peppers and I’ve been fire for a couple of hours now.
Hopefully thats just from the peppers, might want to sprinkle a little penicillin on dinner just in case
In the last year I'd read or heard somewhere that jalapenos were starting to be bred to have lesser heat because they are used often for mass produced snacks.
I did find this Food Network article
https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/news/why-are-jalapenos-getting-milder
I heard a couple podcasts (the Spookful being one) that had stories on this. More milder jalapenos are preferred because of their popularity and the consumer demands for different spice spice levels. It's essential and more economical then to have milder peppers and then add in capsaicin to create the different levels of spices versus growing several different varieties of peppers with different capsaicin levels.
There are newer varieties of jalapeños that are less spicy that are available.
Growers have started to prioritize those variants since they’re easier for food processing plants to work with. Food processor plants pretty much just want the raw flavor and then want to be able to control the spice level themselves.
Grocery stores buy up what is available and that more often than not is the less spicy variants.
Embarrassingly, I read way too many of the comments here saying or alluding to this before the processing and supply parts of it clicked. One more reason not to buy processed food.
Go to a local Hispanic tienda near you and ask them where the hot ones are. That’s my hack!
Lol, I live in Canada. That is probably not an option for me
Depending where you are in Canada, they could all be those same prepackaged tray sold at walmart, roblaws etc that don't taste like anything. Anywhere that sells them loose usually will taste better, if they're not shrivelled sad things that never get purchased in your area. Best have been from these unmanned veggie huts a local farm runs but I get that is privileged and they're closed for the season now.
Not exactly. We have one nearby and I got a bunch of very large jalapeños. Not that hot.
The ones with the ribs/dried scars are spicier in my experience. The older the pepper, the more hateful... Or something like that.
I was going to say this also. It’s not guaranteed but they’re much more likely to be spicier.
It’s not the age, they’re stressed from not being watered as much and also getting long hours of full sunlight.
I grow them indoors. The key is to starve them a bit. Just enough water to grow and stay alive. My peppers get about 9 hours of direct (synthetic) sunlight per day. Stressing them causes the scarring and they be hotter. Then you can germinate seeds from your hottest peppers and keep going like that to “breed” them selectively.
Being generous with water will grow plants faster and give a much larger yield, so it’s more profitable! But they won’t be as flavorful and spicy.
Growing jalapenos indoors is really easy and doesn’t take a ton of space. I highly recommend people grow their own. They’re beautiful plants, easy to care for, and over time you’ll master customizing your capsaicin. I grow several varieties of peppers indoors. They are my houseplants, lol.
Try using Serranos instead. Not quite the same flavor, but often more consistent than Jalapenos.
Different seasons and growing regions can influence the heat of Jalapenos and other hot peppers , as others have noted.
By far the tamest seem to be the commercially produced hydroponic ones (usually sold on those foam trays shrink wrapped with glossy plastic in Reduced Oxygen Packaging ROP).
Personally, I always buy the loose ones, which are often more consistent, other than seasonal variations.
It's been bred out of them! Here's a fantastic podcast episode from this year about just this very thing. Enjoy!
https://www.sporkful.com/how-the-jalapeno-lost-its-heat/
I read an article about this a while back
https://www.dmagazine.com/food-drink/2023/05/why-jalapeno-peppers-less-spicy-blame-aggies/
Here is another: https://www.delish.com/food-news/a64342284/jalapeno-peppers-less-spicy-why/
It just depends a lot on how they were grown. I get some that are as mild as bell peppers and some that are crazy hot. Located in Louisiana.
I remember having some that would knock my socks off spicy. But I feel like I have not had that for a long time.
I love making jams with jalapenos and lately, they’ve just not had that heat I was going for
There are a ton of commercially viable varieties and the genetic drift is getting pretty wild. The only way to get consistency is to grow your own. An average grocery store will unknowingly stock at least 10 different jalapeño varieties throughout the year.
Texas A&M
Really!
They've been breeding for jalapenos that have the jalapeno taste, but not the spiciness. This makes it easier for makers of packaged goods to include jalapenos, but to standardize the level of heat by adding it from other sources.
Serranos for the win!
try out serrano's instead! or a mixture of serrano's and jalapenos!
A&M ruined it with their all inclusive jalapeños that make wimps feel good about themselves. Get jalapeños from Mexico.
This general trend of labelling very modest amounts of spice with things like "Ghost Pepper" and "Insano-hot" or whatever is super annoying. Who are these people who don't actually like spicy food but want to buy things that are called spicy? Who do they think they are impressing?
Themselves. It’s disingenuous and muddling the quality of actual good hot sauces and peppers. I tried the hot ones last dab and it’s about as hot as a serrano
Da Bomb is pretty hot. It's also gross.
Try sorano peppers.
Serrano*
Thanks, I was questioning my spelling.
I will look for them. They’re not as common where I am
As most jalapeños are canned or jarred , Jalapeños have been purposely bred to be less spicy with capsaicin added back in the processing to give a consistent level of heat.
Look for the dry white veiny kind if you want to pick out just the spicy ones.
It's kind of like spotting a good watermelon.
You need to be buying the Jalapeños that look like they’ve been tanning and chain smoking for twenty years. If you think your pepper had a killer skin routine it’s white people spicy.
In my experience, jalapeños vary wildly on levels of spice from one to another.
I have a pretty high spice tolerance, so most aren't that spicy to me anyway, but I really think it depends.
Jalapeños are notorious for being iffy on whether they’re spicy or not. This is nothing new.
1 in 11 jalapeños have no spice at all.
I’ve switched to scotch bonnets and habaneros years ago because they have a sweet, fruity flavors (scotch bonnets) or citrusy floral flavors (habaneros) and a good basic level of heat. Jalapeños have always been pretty mediocre in flavor and the heat is barely detectable… They’re almost interchangeable with green bell peppers.
I absolutely love Jalapeños, they're my favorite peppers. But I don't buy them in stores any more. My wife grows them in the garden, and when they're really ripe, they are great. Half of them are hot AF, and the other half are really mild. I make a paste of them, its delicious!
Glad it's not just me. Thought I'd cursed my peppers! Mine are home grown and 0 heat, even with seeds and fully red, no difference. Bahhh
This is funny to read while getting spiced out by a jalapeño in my pho.
i grow them and they tend to be consistently very hot. i give a ton of them away and people are typically really surprised by the heat
Had a banh mi the other day and I swear I bit into the hottest jalapeño of my life smh. I never take peppers off my food but this was straight 🔥
I started using Serranos more when I want spicy. They have a more consistent heat level and taste similar.
As a gardener, I can also say there are many strains of jalapeño, some hot and some mild. I grew an heirloom Mexican variety this year that was hotter and smaller than any store bought jalapeño called Zapotec.
Often smaller jalapeños are hotter, and also ones with “corking” is hotter, which are the little brown scar stripes that form on some mature green jalapeños before they ripen to red (or orange or other colors depending on the strain). Also Serrano peppers are similar to jalapeño but hotter and smaller if you have access to them.
Serranos are nice. A step up in heat and very tasty in my opinion
I think the grocery store ones are inconsistent throughout the year, bland in the winter and hot in the summer.
When I was young we would challenge each other to eat peice the size of a chocolate chip and our mouths would burn forever.. they seem to be GMOed to be milder and family friendly one step above a green pepper. I cant find a suitable replacement to the old-style habaneros and ghost are spicy but way different taste profile
https://www.southernliving.com/jalapenos-are-less-spicy-11768631
Stick with Serranos, they are superior in every way
https://www.cookist.com/no-youre-not-hallucinating-jalapenos-are-less-spicy-now-and-theres-a-reason/
I imagine they are going the way of the tomato, where flavor/spice is bred out in favor of “consistency.”
Tomatoes grown at home are almost a different veggie entirely to the crap in the store. It’s the one I notice the biggest difference when grown at home
Did I see this post already? Is this deja vu?
It's a common complaint. It shows up every few months.
Switch to Serrano.More consistent heat.The taste is similar to a jalapeño,probably the closest in taste in the chile family.
Sometimes I will cry and choke from a jalapeño, other times I will have to check if I grabbed green bell peppers.
If you want consistent jalapeños, buy serranos or poblanos.
It's a purely regional and ecological thing. I know another poster said something about Texas A&M but that isn't even close to the whole story nor is it a relevant part of the supply chain.
I've never liked cooking with jalapenos because they're either basically a bell pepper or way too spicy for the dish. Serranos are much more consistent.
Americans happened to jalapeños. They like pretending they like spicy food so jalapeños were bred to be mild.
Texas A&M ruined jalapeños by making a hybrid jalapeño and bell pepper to make jalapeños bigger and less spicy. This was driven by commercial demand for less spicy jalapeños to make natural jalapeño flavored products that are less spicy or using extracts to make them more spicy on demand.
So, while the Aggies suck on the football field (11-2 feels like 8-5 BAS), they also suck at agricultural by ruining one of my favorite peppers.
Disclaimer: I'm not an Aggie fan, I'm a fan of the flagship university in Texas simply known as Texas.
I noticed this as well. To me they taste grassy. If you’re looking for a substitution that’s spicier I would try Serrano chilies.
Try looking for jalepenos that are specifically labeled 'hot' that's what I've started doing because they can be super inconsistent. Once upon a time I was of the mind that the fresher the hotter. This was due to slicing them up right out of the garden onto a burger and being impressed.
This was not the result times after, but then a random jar I purchased had real heat. I think a part of me died that day.
Jalepenos can be à hit or miss and can be tastier in the summer months. I grow my own and noticed as they mature from green to red they get slightly hotter and sweet.
Another tip is if you pick the peppers with the white creases on the skin those tend to be hotter something I learned from my Uncle
I grow my own. The younger the pepper is the hotter it is. As I let it stay on the plant and begin to turn red. It becomes much milder.
Serranos or thai chillis
The jalapeños I grow will wreck you.
Have you tried to grow your own? Usually my homegrown jalapeños are fairly spicy. My grandparents would say that if you watered them less they’d be spicier. That stressing out the plant yields a spicier pepper
I grow a lot of hot peppers at my vegetable farm and big grocery store peppers just taste like mild pepper flavored water. I’m very biased but this is another question where the answer is buy local and in season if you want quality.
Every harvest is different.
Totally depends on location and growing conditions (ie, weather).
I don't know how widespread they are but im told the newest strains are bred for flavor and no heat.
Having worked on a farm that grew jalapenos, depending on how they grow and when you harvest them, the spice level can vary drastically.
At least in my experience if you let them grow to where they start changing from green to red, they get extremely spicy, far spicier than most people expecting a jalapeno would appreciate. Harvest them more early and especially after de-seeding while cooking they have that more acidic bitterness and a more bell peppery-ish taste with subtle spice level
On a tangent, given how popular spicy food is now, it surprises me that you rarely see red jalapenos for sale at grocery stores. I believe there are some canned products with red jalapenos, but I never see them fresh in the produce section, mainly at farmers markets. I think they could do well.
Just checking - is this just in the last few weeks? If so, did you take a covid test?
No, more like a year at least
Agreed. I've noticed it for several years. Several peppers that are between a bell pepper & jalapeno on the Scoville scale are now consistently hotter than any grocery store jalapenos. Most of the big seed companies jalapeno seeds are really mild too. Your best bet is to find heirloom seeds & grow your own and can them for use throughout the year.
Grow some in your own pot or garden. They are quite spicy compared to the store bought kind!
I find store bought to be very mild, but whenever I grow them they light me on fire.
Use serranos for a little heat. IMO they have better flavor than habaneros.
Gotta grow your own for the spicy ones
I was getting sick of inconsistent jalapeños. Occasionally they were the heat I remember, or close to it, but usually they were just glorified green peppers.
What you want to try are called Serranos and they’re fairly common. Similar look and taste to jalapeño but half the size. The heat is consistent, about 1.5x a good jalapeño. So if a “normal” jalapeño wasn’t already too hot for you, these are perfect.
I’d imagine farmers are pushing more water for a more bountiful crop (weight wise). Chile peppers tend to get hotter if the climate they grow in is more arid. Less water, less crop, and less money. These guys don’t care about SHU and may not necessarily care about the flavor. They definitely care about their bottom line.
My roommate grows jalapenos. She abuses them and they’re hot AF but 1/2 the size I see at the grocery store.
In the summer I grow my own. I miss that this time of year. Grocery store ones aren’t worth buying
Depends on the jalapeno. Try serranos, but even those are inconsistent. They do taste different and I’d go for habs over serranos
Wow. I'm in California, I have had half-assed jalapeños (unless pickled) for the last 10 years and then the last 5 times I've gotten them on a sandwich I've had to take them out because my mouth was on fire.
I clicked this expecting you to say you'd experience the spice level insanity and it's so funny to me it's the opposite.
Grow your own, they will be ridiculously hot in my experience.
In my experience, larger jalapeños are less spicy and most grocery stores near me carry massive jalapeños now. I actually really like the flavor of whatever breed these are, but agree they arent spicy anymore.
I live in the American Midwest and have discovered that most grocery store jalapeños are worthless unless you want the jalapeno FLAVOR but no spice. Now, I have discovered that Aldi has amazingly spicey jalapeños always! At least the past 2 or 3 years. If available in your area, try Aldi jalapeños!
They're over-watered to make them as large and appealing as possible.
Problem is, this leads to bland chilies with little capsaicin. You see, chilies produce capsaicin when stressed, typically from being under-watered.
google coolapeno. the solution is to get them at a hispanic or asian market
I found the jalapeños in Mexico to be much spicier than in the US. I figured the US was intentionally breeding them that way.
I grow Jalapenos in my greenhouse. You can get a sweet or hot or mild fruit from the same plant. They are definitely becoming more unpredictable. I've taken to batch processing and blending together to blend out the peaks and troughs of jalapenos. I'm trying to source heirloom seeds for the coming season because the genetics have reached some kind of evolutionary dead end😂
I asked the same thing a while back and got some insightful responses: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/s/swOfjaHLWM
Chiming in as someone who grows large quantities of jalapeños every year, it’s not just the ones you buy in the store, my homegrown ones have also been getting milder every year! Despite growing the same strain every year, with seeds sourced from the same (organic) seed company, in the same garden location every year, and in weather conditions that obviously vary by year but stay within the same general range of temp/rainfall/hrs of sunlight etc. 5 years ago we could barely eat the jalapeño poppers I’d make as they were so spicy, now even the slightest hint of warmth is unusual. Quite odd.
Serrano peppers have the same flavor and a consistent heat.
I just bought a bag at the store labeled hot and they are definitely hot.
gracious - i wish i could have sent you some of the peppers i grew in my garden this summer because they were obscenely spicy. i even candied them and they were still spicy as hell.
Selective breeding of jalapeños to ensure uniform size, resistance to bugs, and to ensure uniform heat as requested by food manufacturers has resulted in commercially grown jalapeños being less spicy
Yeah someone mentioned that on another thread a fair while back. Less epicy 😱.. no wonder all the ones ive tried recently (not ones ive grown) felt like little or no spice)
I feel this!! Agreed
Always choose the smallest you can find; the problem being they're all huge.
I’ve noticed this too. But I swear those grilled whole jalapeños from the taco truck are so damn spicy every time. Maybe they’re homegrown or something.
Habaneros always seemed fruity to me too, as well as sweet and smoky.
I just had poppers that nearly melted my face off.
I have not experienced this. I made some green chili for Xmas and the jalapeños were so hot they were making me cough just deseeding them!
This is exactly why I decided to grow my own jalapeños this last year and oh boy they certainly have consistent heat as long as you look up about what causes the different heat intensities in peppers(neglect)
Try serrano. Close in flavor, though thinner walled. And the heat goes beyond jalapenos.
I had to switch to Serrano to get even a bit of heat and more often habaneros or ghost that I grow.
Idk what you're talking about. Less than an hour ago i had a roasted jalapeno that burnt the shit out of mouth.
Use Jalapeños for flavor and the little red ones used in Thai food for spice.
I’ve noticed the jalapeños from my produce store are way spicier than my regular grocery store
nutrient leach in soil is making basically everything tasteless. welcome to monoculture farming. we’re making the same mistake as we did in the 1920s, lol. it also is reducing the nutrients in all fruits and veggies so there’s that.
It all depends on the time of the year. They go from mild to omg.