Some people simply love to heat things up when they are grilling great burgers at home. And what better way is there, than experimenting with some delicious hot peppers that are easy to prepare, and which add so many incredible flavor notes to a great grass-fed 100% beef burger?
If you have never grilled hot peppers before, we’ve got some essential professional gourmet intel that can help save you time, and tips that will make your first experience with grilling spicy peppers a good one. Know someone who cleaned and cut jalapenos and then touched his eyes? Don’t be that guy! We’ll give you the down-low on safely grilling peppers, and which types are the best to pair with your home-grilled burger.
Preparing Hot Peppers the Safe Way
With that introduction, we’d like to get right into some tips for grilling peppers that won’t land you on a chair in your backyard, with an ice pack on your face. There are a few Chef secrets that can help you safely prepare and grill hot peppers like a pro, even if you have never tried it before.
Using gloves may seem like an extraordinary precaution for food that you plan to eat, but many types of hot peppers have higher levels of capsaicin (the active component in peppers that makes them spicy or hot) when they are raw. When you start to trim the hot peppers, and remove the seeds, the moisture in your hands can make the capsaicin become rapidly absorbed into your skin. You can start to feel a tingling sensation, followed by some discomfort, and those naturally occurring chemicals can also be transferred to your eyes, or nose if you happen to touch your face. Basic latex gloves will protect your hands and remind you not to touch your face or mouth while you are preparing them.
Some very hot variants of peppers also emit a vapor which you can’t see, but it can quickly burn your nose and eyes when you are cutting them. Commercial kitchens often provide not only gloves, but also protective eye wear to help prevent injuries. Better safe than sorry, because the irritants in capsaicin can last hours, and in some cases days after exposure. It’s the pepper plants natural deterrent and secret weapon against predators, and it clearly works.
Those steps may seem like a lot of extra work to anyone except someone who really enjoys the deliciously spicy flavors that a grilled pepper topping provides, on a great grass-fed burger. Because if you ask people who love spicy food, after the initial touch-down burning sensation, there is an incredibly rich flavor that is worth suffering a little discomfort for.
Grilling Hot Peppers for a Burger Topping
We just discussed how potent the heat can be and residual afterburn of a good quality hot pepper, so when it comes grilling them, take some of the same precautions to protect yourself from injury. Some peppers that are extra high on the Scoville scale can cause serious health effects if inhaled or ingested before cooking.
Prepare your grill by cleaning it, and designate a certain section for your hot peppers, if you plan to be grilling other meat at the same time. We’ve heard some pretty interesting stories about people who chose to grill their peppers on the top rack, not realizing that the condensation from the peppers would drip straight down to their burgers, or other meats and vegetables on the grill.
We like the idea of covering a certain area of your grill with foil, and roasting them that way, or creating an envelope to help trap some of the juices inside them. They may not become charred in the same way, but it can help contain the spiciness to just one area of the grill and make cleanup a lot easier.
The Universal Measurement of Spicy: The Scoville Scale
This part is entirely subjective and determined by your threshold for spiciness and heat. There are many different varieties of peppers from mild and sweet, all the way up the scale to what we would rate as “five alarm” hot. You know, the kind you are going to want to drink a glass of milk or eat some bread immediately after you take a bite?
All hot peppers are rated on the Scoville Scale. One of our favorite online resources is the Pepper Scale, which acts as a free encyclopedia for all things spicy! They share that the Scoville scale was developed by a pharmacist named Wilber Scoville, from Massachusetts. He developed a test and a scale of measurement known as the “Scoville Organoleptic Test” while he was employed with the Parke-Davis pharmaceutical company. The term ‘organoleptic’ means the reaction of all the sense organs, including taste, touch, and smell to piquancy, or spiciness.
When Wilber Scoville developed the test, he ground up a large variety of hot peppers and placed them in a dilution of water. He then administered the solution to his test participants at different phases, added more sugar until the burning sensation was tolerable or completely diminished. He eventually won the Ebert prize from the American Pharmaceutical Association in 1922, and received a Remington Honor Medal, as well as an honorary Doctor of Science from Columbia University for his work, in 1929.
Since then, all hot peppers have been measured by the scientific scale that he invented and tested.
The Best Type of Hot Peppers for Burger Toppings
Some types of hot peppers are frankly too hot to be enjoyed for most people, as a burger topping. But there are many others that lose some of that potency, and move from uncomfortably hot to endurable, and then pleasantly spicy after grilling. The ideal types of peppers have a higher sugar content, which is released naturally when grilled as part of the caramelization process.
If you want to hold on to most of the heat from the fresh hot pepper, avoid soaking them in water before grilling. Here are some of the most popular and recommended hot peppers for grilling as a burger topping and their registry on the Scoville Scale. The higher the number, the bigger the heat.
· Anaheim (500 – 2,000 units or very mild)
· Poblanos (1,000 – 1,500 light to mild)
· Rocotillo (1,500 – 2,500 mild)
· Jalapenos (2,500 - 10,000 mild to medium)
What do some of the world’s hottest peppers rate on the Scoville scale by comparison? Consider this list to carry a ‘proceed with caution’ label from our test kitchen at Free Graze Foods:
· Serrano (10,000 – 23,000 medium to spicy)
· Tabasco (30,000 – 50,000 medium to spicy)
· Scotch Bonnet (100,000 – 350,000 spicy to hot)
· Habanero (100,000 – 350,000 spicy to hot)
And of course, some hot peppers are for expert level spicy food eaters only, and even then, they should be eaten with extreme caution. These are the kind of hot peppers that can actually do some physical damage to your body, not to mention your taste buds, and they are not recommended for anyone with specific health conditions, like cardiovascular issues or high-blood pressure. We’re not kidding.
· Ghost Pepper (855,000 – 1,041,427 hot)
· Trinidad Scorpion (1,200,000 – 2,000,000 very hot)
· Carolina Reaper (1,400,000 - 2,500,000 extremely hot)
To date, the Carolina Reaper is the undisputed champion internationally on the Scoville Scale and it has a bit of colorful and recent American history behind it. It was originally grown in Rock Hill, South Carolina at the greenhouse of a commercial grower named “Smokin” Ed Currie, who owns the PuckerButt Pepper Company in Fort Mill. We can’t make this stuff up, it’s true.
The Caroline Reaper was certified by the Guinness World Records in August of 2017 as the hottest chili pepper in the world, after it was tested at Winthrop University in South Carolina. The test revealed a measurement of 1,641,183 Scoville Heat Units.
Now that you know everything there is to know, about selecting, preparing and grilling the perfect blend of spicy peppers for your Free Graze burger, which one will you try first? Let us know by leaving us a comment below.
