Everything You Need To Know About Chilli Varieties A-FOn this page we will investigate chilli varieties in the alphabetical group A-F.
Anaheim
The colour varies from ligth to dark red-brown and as you can see the ancho is a broad, flat, roughly heart-shaped chilli. The name, in fact, translates as "broad" or "wide". Heat Level: 3 out of 10 (1500-2000 Scovilles) Flavour: Wow. Just open a bag of these beauties and the rich aroma of raisins, figs, prunes, and dried apricots will surprise you. Not at all what you expect from chillies - particulalrly here in Australasia where our dominant chilli influence comes out of SE Asia which does not have these varieties at all. The flavour is the same as that beautiful aroma. Use: Use wherever you want a deep, rich chilli flavour with a mild heat. They are almost always re-hydrated in hot water for 10-20 minutes before use. Growing: Poblanos will grow in the general conditions set out in my Grow Your Own Chillies pages. They may require some shade to prevent sun burn on the large fruit surfaces if your garden gets a lot of direct sunlight throughout the day. Typical yield for a plant is in the order of 15 fruit though 25+ is not unheard of. Once you've harvested the fruit, head to my preserving your chillies page to learn how to dry them and produce your own ancho chillies.
Heat Level: 2 - 3 out of 10 (1,000-10,000 Scovilles) Flavour: Sweet when ripe, otherwise simply a lighter version of the capsicum flavour. Use: Anywhere you want mild chillies rather than the hotter ones listed in many recipes. The larger ones are also great for stuffing. Growing: Banana chillies are an easy variety to grow and will thrive in the general conditions described in my Grow Your Own Chillies pages.
Heat Level: 0 out of 10 (0-400 Scovilles) Flavour: I think we're all familiar with the sweet, capsicum flavour of fruit of this species. The green, immature pods are less sweet and have a more herbaceous flavour. Use: Their are a multitude of uses for these chillies, too many to list here. From salads through to pasta dishes, curries, pizzas or simply oiled and grilled on the cafe. Growing: Capsicums are an easy variety to grow and will thrive in the general conditions described in my Grow Your Own Chillies pages. The plants are compact and multi-stemmed with dark to medium green leaves and grow to around 60-70cm in height.
The amount of curve varies significantly from those picture (left) to fruit where the tip almost touches the stem, forming a circle. The recognisable shape is one of the distinguishing features and it is one of the easiest chillies to source fresh as even the unimaginative supermarkets carry them. Heat Level: 5-6 out of 10 (30,000-60,000 Scovilles) Flavour: The flavour is essentially the same as that of a capsicum of the same colour as the fruit. As with capsicums, the red tends to be the sweetest form. Use: For the home chef, these chillies can be used wherever you need a generic chilli to provide some heat and a little flavour. Fresh green cayennes are a great addition to a salsa. Commercially, cayennes either end up as mash and go into the sauce industry, or they are dried and used as cayenne powder for both medicinal and culinary purposes. Growing: Cayennes are an easy variety to grow and will thrive in the general conditions described in my Grow Your Own Chillies pages. The plants are hardy, tree-like plants with multiple branches and will grow to approximately a metre tall and 60cm wide. They are prolific fruiters and a mature plant will commonly produce 40+ chillies. With that many chillies being produced, once your've picked them you'll need to go to my
preserving your chillies
page to make sure they don't go to waste.
The smoked jalapeno variety that we are likely to come across outside of Mexico, particularly here in the southern hemisphere, is the morita (little blackberry in Spanish) which are dark red to purple in colour. This variety is not smoked as long and thus remains leathery and pliable. They are also cheaper to produce. Heat Level: 7 out of 10 (50,000-100,000 Scovilles) Flavour: Chipotles have a rich, strong, smoky flavour. Use: Used throughout Mexican cuisines, chipotles are a great addition to many dishes from easy, uncooked salsas through to casseroles and BBQ sauces. Growing: Given that you don't grow chipotles, you make them from Jalapenos
Heat Level: This chilli is predominantly used in the making of hot sauces, though a couple of common uses in Mexico are frying them whole with black beans, and roasting them them until very crisp, grinding to a powder and sprinkling across sliced fruit or cucumber.
Flavour: The de arbol has a sharp, distinctive flavour that develops further when the dried pods are roasted in a frying pan for a few moments.
Growing Despite the name this chilli does not come from a tree. It grows on a thin, rangy plant that gets to about a metre high. I've never grown them, though I'm told that the seedlings need more care than the hardier varieties such as jalapeno and piquin. What this means is that you would be wise to toughen these seedlings up two or three weeks longer, as described in my Grow Your Own Chillies pages, than you would for the hardier varieties.
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The anaheim is a variety of the New Mexican fruit type, so jump to my 
Description: The ancho chilli only exists in dried form. How is this possible you ask ? Because the ancho is one of the two dried forms of the
Description: A large, slightly skewed conical shape 10-15cm long. Fruit colours start off light green and eventually change into a pale to rich yellow.
Description: The fruit of the cayenne are pendant (they hang down), long, and slim achieving a maximum length of about 20cm.
Description: This is a smooth skinned chilli with a slightly undulating surface that tapers to a point at the base. Averaging around 7-8 cm long and 1cm across, they are a thin fleshed, reasonably hot variety.
