It burns! It burns!

November 5, 2008 6:07 PM

What is this pepper? The teeny tiny yellow one in the middle. hot hot hot It just kicked my ass (I was warned by the seller, but did it anyway.
posted by zackola to food & drink (13 comments total)

Scotch bonnets?
posted by raztaj at 6:24 PM on November 5, 2008

oh wait, never mind (clearly i read can not). that's a tiny pepper!
posted by raztaj at 6:25 PM on November 5, 2008

I have no idea, but did it hit your mouth, or just your nose like a horseradish? And was it the hottest thing you've had, or just hotter than normal? Did you eat just one? Or did you pop several in like a handful of peas?

Hope someone answers. I asked a question about hot stuff a bit back. I didn't see anything that looked like that on any of the sites though.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:25 PM on November 5, 2008

Cumari?
posted by nikkorizz at 6:31 PM on November 5, 2008

Chiletepin.
posted by jamaro at 6:39 PM on November 5, 2008

and raztaj wins.
posted by dawson at 6:42 PM on November 5, 2008

Possibly chili pequin, but more likely one of a whole assortment of small ultra-hot chilis that get called names like "bird's eye chili," "tepin," and "piri piri/pili pili" (example; another; another; another).

For your spicy needs, here are a bunch of photos of different hot peppers -- choose your pain, order the seeds, and make your windowsill a more flavorful place.
posted by Forktine at 7:17 PM on November 5, 2008

Dawson, there are Scotch Bonnets in the picture, but the itty bitty tiny yellow one in the middle is not a Scotch Bonnet.
posted by Class Goat at 7:20 PM on November 5, 2008

Couldn't it be a Scotch Bonnet that had not matured to the nubbly stage yet?

According to the Victory Seed page, they are in the highest heat category at 100,000-400,000 Scoville units. Pure capsaicin is 16,000,000 Scoville units.
posted by jamjam at 7:44 PM on November 5, 2008

Eckerton Hill from Union Square Greenmarket in NYC, right? I think those tiny little ones the size of a pinkie joint are cumari, from Brazil, as nikkorizz points out.
posted by kathryn at 7:46 PM on November 5, 2008

Almost certainly a cumari. There are precious few small peppers with that particular grape-like shape and only one I know of that is yellow at maturity (assuming your photo shows a mature pepper). Most others are lantern shaped.

The thing that puzzles me is that the cumari is not a particulalry hot pepper.
posted by bz at 8:50 PM on November 5, 2008

@bz, Your response made me feel like a wuss, but then I saw the Cumari rated as very hot on some of those links, and that made me feel a little better. Would be nice to have a Scoville unit rating for it, so I know what I'm in for when I get to the Scotch Bonnets ;-) Thanks all.
posted by zackola at 6:05 AM on November 6, 2008

Class Goat
I stand corrected, I didn't look carefully.
I'd love to try some of those.
posted by dawson at 5:53 PM on November 6, 2008