<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by SoupNazi</i>
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LAST HINT: If you are lucky enough to find a bunch of RED jalapenos, use Hickory wood instead of mesquite.
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To make a real traditional chipotle as made for centuries going back to Aztec times, the pepper MUST be completely red. The flavor is radically different than with green peppers. But, as you say, not many people are lucky enough to be able to get red ones, so that is a corner that some folks must cut.
But the choice of wood is one place where you don't need to stray from the traditional recipe. Until very very recently, chipotles were smoked with pecan wood and only pecan wood. Now some people are branching out to different woods such as mesquite or hickory, which is fine, but it won't yield the same chipotle that you buy already smoked in a Mexican grocery.
I'm not trying to discourage the use of other woods. I'm just saying that a North Carolina smoked pork butt, for example, is smoked using hickory, and if you chose to smoke it using alder wood or oak then what you'd get may be great, but it isn't the real McCoy.
As for the question of heat, you are very correct that the heat of jalapenos varies, more so in my experience than any other pepper. If I remember correctly that is determined by 3 major factors, in decreasing order of importance: the "blood line" of the plant (were its ancestors hot?), the acidity of the soil (more acid equals hotter peppers; some folks mulch with pine needles to kick up the acidity of the soil), and the amount of dry heat while the plant was growing (a hotter climate produces a hotter pepper). I don't know of any physical tell-tale that would indicate the heat (but that doesn't mean one doesn't exist). The best way I know of is to ask the grocer if you can test one, then slice it open and taste the white membrane as close to the stem end of the pepper as possible. That is going to be both the hottest part of the pepper, and the most consistent indicator.
Me, I don't care; I love habaneros. I eat what seems like gallons of chipotle puree, but if you want to do something *wonderful* to a pot or bowl of chile, smoke some habaneros (best wood is probably something sweet like apple or cherry) exactly like your method for smoking jalapenos, dry them, and powder them. Use *very* sparingly. WARNING! If you do this, *always* wear gloves when dealing with the habs, *always* dehydrate them outside (or your whole family will be choking and crying), and *always* wear a cheap wood-worker's mouth-and-nose mask and some kind of glasses when you are powdering the result in the coffee grinder. I have separately made each of the 3 mistakes above (not heeding those pieces of advice), and regretted it immensely. I will never forget the time I was powdering dried habs and accidentally coughed and blew powder up into my eyes. If you've seen the eye-popping scene in the movie "Total Recall", you've got some idea of what it was like. ;-)
Curtis Jackson
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