Sandia pepper facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Sandia pepper |
|
|---|---|
| Species | Capsicum annuum |
| Cultivar group | New Mexico chile |
| Origin | United States |
| Heat |  Hot |
| Scoville scale | 5,000–30,000 SHU |
The Sandia pepper is a special type of New Mexico chile pepper. It's a "cultivar," which means it's a plant that people have grown and changed over time to have certain features. This pepper belongs to the Capsicum annuum plant family.
Sandia peppers have a "Scoville rating" that tells you how spicy they are. They can range from mildly warm to quite hot! These peppers are grown a lot in New Mexico, USA, where they were first created. They are very popular in New Mexican cuisine, which is the cooking style of that area.
People often pick Sandia peppers when they are still green. Then, they roast them to make "green chile." When the peppers get fully ripe, they turn red. You can dry these red peppers and grind them into a powder to make chile powder. In New Mexico, Sandia peppers are often used to make dishes like red or green posole, green chile stew, and carne adovada.
The Story of the Sandia Pepper
The Sandia chile pepper was created by a scientist named Dr. Roy Harper in 1956. He worked at New Mexico State University. Dr. Harper made the Sandia pepper by mixing two other types of peppers: the New Mexico No. 9 (which was first made by Dr. Fabian Garcia) and a Californian Anaheim chile. The Anaheim chile was also a descendant of the No. 9 pepper.
This type of chile pepper has a medium amount of heat. It is grown and eaten a lot in New Mexico. People enjoy Sandia peppers when they are green and also when they are ripe and red. Sometimes, they are even dried and strung together into long decorative strings called ristras.
Sandia peppers are known for growing many peppers on each plant, and the peppers are usually quite large. Like most New Mexico chile types, Sandia peppers can be a bit different from one another. This means that some peppers from the same plant might be mild (around 5,000 Scoville Heat Units, or SHU), while others might be super hot (up to 30,000 SHU)! If you want to make a Sandia pepper less spicy, you can take out the seeds before you cook or eat it.
