Cayenne Pepper Mixup

Cayenne Pepper Should Be Bright In Colour. Not Dull!

We all make mistakes in the kitchen from time to time…it’s the spice of life!

Like the other day, I made a beautiful fruit crisp for dessert. It was filled with luscious colourful blueberries and raspberries, topped with a crunchy sugary oatmeal coating. Yum!

I served it to my family in small white bowls after our main course. As I was eating the crisp, my mouth began to fill up with a fiery heat infused with sweetness. I was confused. Was I really feeling heat? As in, hot pepper heat? Or was it just warmth from the oven?

I kept eating, trying to figure out the mystery…was I imagining the heat in my mouth? It was like listening to a friend talk while multitasking. They mention a life-changing event that happened to them, and because you’re distracted, you’re confused with what you heard. Eventually you stop, look at them in bafflement, and ask them to repeat themselves.

Finally, my husband spoke up. He quietly asked if I’d added jalapeño peppers to the fruit crisp. That’s when it dawned on me…I immediately knew. I had inadvertently sprinkled cayenne pepper into the fruit crisp, thinking it was cinnamon.

Mystery solved!

I laughed it off and make a lame excuse about needing my eyesight checked. Surprisingly, the fruit crisp was still edible.The family said it was a nice twist on a typical cobbler, and all was good.

It made me remember that it’s okay to make cooking mistakes, because -- as they say, we learn from our mistakes.

So, what did I learn? I learned that my cayenne pepper looked like cinnamon because it was old, faded, and (luckily) had dulled in flavour. Cayenne pepper should be a bright red-orange colour…like the fresh cayenne pepper on the plant it comes from.

I also learned that cayenne pepper should be stored in a cool, dark place away from light and the stove heat (guilty!) and it should be replaced every 1-2 years (guilty again! Mine was three years old).

I often use cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes and fresh jalapeño peppers in my cooking. I love the ‘kick’ they add to my dishes. There’s a scale for spiciness call the Scoville scale that rates the heat of peppers. To give you a comparison, a jalapeño pepper is rated at about 5,000, red pepper flakes (which is a mixture of mild and hot peppers, including cayenne pepper) can range from 25,000-48,000 and cayenne is 30,000 to 50,000.

Besides adding a bit of heat to a dish, these little peppers are filled with vitamin C, vitamin A and B6, which can help your immune system fight off nasty bugs.

It's amazing what you can learn from your cooking mistakes!

Keeping with the spicy theme, Here are some other recipes from the blog to try if you want to experiment with cayenne pepper.