How to Pick a Pepper, Keep it Fresh & Handle it
When buying, storing, and handling fresh peppers:- Pick peppers with tight and glossy skins with no bruises or soft spots
- Store fresh peppers in a paper bag up to two weeks in the refrigerator.
- Know that two peppers from the same plant can differ in heat
- Know that the longer and thinner the pepper, the hotter it will be
- Turn down the heat by halving the pepper and removing the pithy ribs and seeds
- Wear rubber gloves or cover your hands with plastic sandwich bags before touching chile peppers
- Wash your hands after handling chiles and never rub your eyes or touch your face (peppers can cause second-degree burns, and it takes 12 hours for the pain to subside)
Cooking with Chiles
When cooking with chile peppers:- Always taste the peppers and the dish you are adding them to
- Know that most of the flavor, not the heat, is in the outer wall.
Sherry:
ReplyDeleteDifficult as it often seems, try hard(er) to use parallel form in all list items. For instance, here "Pick" and "Store" commit you to using, say, "Know that"... two peppers from the same plant. There's usually a way to get this done with unduly contorting your writing. Also--for visual and conceptual reasons--I'd have you always use a lead-in/into phrase or sentence between a heading and a list.
Great stuff, as usual.