Chillies - is there a secret way of telling how hot they are that has passed me by?

[NorbertDentressangle]

We use fresh chillies a lot in cooking and I have quite a high tolerance for the heat although not as much as DP.

When I follow a recipe, for example the one I did tonight, it will often say add 1 or 2 chopped chillies but I know I've had supposed 'mild' chillies that would blow your head off if you used half a chilli let alone 2!

If you blindly believe the heat ratings they give on the packet then you risk ruining a lovely meal.

How can a recipe just say 'use 1 chilli' or 'finely chop 2 chillies'?

Is there something I'm missing?

I nibble on the end, then try a couple of the seeds.
Mind you I like mindblowingly hot chillis and have been known to blow other peoples heads off.

Thats brave OYBBK! . Like a sort of chilli roulette

I'm probably wrong in assuming this but I always thought that the small skinny ones are the hot ones and the fatter bigger ones are milder. Also using the seeds too adds to the heat doesn't it?

You can partly tell from the seed colour - while the seeds are still white they're fresher and therefore hotter. But I usually nibble the end and sniff it when cut - if it's really hot you can tell from the fumes.

The tiny little ones are hot. The green thin (like in take aways) not so hot but hot for some currys. Anything bigger is usually quite mild.

The hottest part of a chilli is near the stalk (so I have been told). The seeds will give you a good idea of how hot it is.

There is a scale for chilli heat but it's no use when everything is in plastic................grrrrr.

Are you cooking Indian or SE Asian food?

Tonights food was actually Italian - Antonio Carluccio recipe (but we didn't bother with the spinach balls).

DP cooks a lot of Indian food but we tend to use chilli in a variety of dishes.

Thanks for the tips.

I'm growing ohnivek chillis from real seed company they grow up to a foot long apparently and are supposed to be stupendously hot. I hope so, they are just starting to come into flower :)

ooh that site would be good for presents for chilli loving friends and family although its the wrong time of year to buy them now.

Are they quite easy to grow as I'm not the most green-fingered of people?

I'm sure I read somewhere its not so much the seeds that provide the heat but the white membrane they are attached to.

I grow my own and have noticed they are hotter if naturally dried rather than frozen. Ickle ones tend to be hotter eg the bird eye variety but not always the case.

They are easy to grow I have 7 plants on my island ATM grown from seed. I live in south facing SE hotspot but I still keep them indoors, they don't do as well outside IME.

Amazing site OYBBK yr chillis look fab! I roffled @ the plastic gloves disintegrating after 30 minutes because of the power of the chilli

Really easy to grow. Feed them like tomatoes when they start to set fruit. I grow them on e windowsill until July or August.

It's a splendid company, good ethics, seeds all germinated which frankly is astonishing.

Ooh, Kitten - another one here saying thanks for the site link!
I'm going to buy a couple of varieties for a friend and for me.