A Chilli Summer

So, we love chilli.

We love chilli so much, there is a whole shelf of our fridge dedicated to all things chilli: hot sauces, gochuchang, chilli pastes, chilli crisp, chilli oils, curry pastes, sriracha, salsas, chilli pickles, sambals…to be honest, it’s starting to take over other parts of the fridge now too. We also make our own chilli pickles.

We eat chilli with every meal. Our family has South East Asian heritage, so we grew up eating Indian meals very regularly, and at home we eat curries a couple of times a week, along with Mexican food at least once or twice a week. The other nights, we usually have Korean (spicy), Chinese (spicy) or Italian (spicy). We sprinkle hot sauce or drizzle chilli oil on our breakfast eggs or drop pickled chillies in our tomato and cheese toasties at lunchtime. There is not really a single meal that chilli does not touch. Possibly dessert, although if they still made those awesome chilli Tim Tams…(that’s a hint, Arnott’s).

For the past couple of years, a nearby town has hosted a chill festival each February, and for the past couple of years, we have attended. It was on again last weekend – and we rolled up once more, because we love, love, love chilli. It’s such a fun event, made more special this year because a friend was promoting her business, Uu-Mah-Mia at this year’s event. Her Chilli Crunch product is locally made in Alice Springs, and is fabulous.

Other great products there were our local favourite, Salt Gang (we love their Italo Crisp chilli oil, which is amazing on pizzas, pasta, on eggs – we go through it faster than any other condiment in our fridge), and this Victorian mob that grows and produces their own chillies and tomatillos to make hot sauces and Cowboy Candy and Toffee from jalapeños. OMG – it’s amazing stuff.

And when we got home from the Chilli Festival, after tasting multiple types of chilli products, buying more chilli plants and with chilli crisp, hot sauce, and Cowboy Candy in tow, my husband decided it was time to make chilli paste. He made a sambal from our homegrown Habaneros and Devil’s Tongue chillies, and it just about blew the roof off the house. We might need a biohazard sticker for the jar.

Chilli Varieties

In addition to the chilli fridge, we also grow a lot of chillies – at least twelve different varieties at last count.

It’s rare that I find a chilli I don’t enjoy, although it occasionally happens. I have a high tolerance for heat, but I don’t want a chilli that is so hot I don’t enjoy the flavour. I like a hot chilli, such as the Scorpion or Habanero, but I want the chilli to taste delicious as well. Conversely, I enjoy some milder chillies, such as the jalapeño or Curly Toenail, if they have a lovely bright or sweet flavour.

What I don’t like is a chilli with a flat, unpleasant, or dull flavour, no matter the spice level. Three that I have grown recently and found very unpleasant or boring are the Purple Maui (very hot but not very tasty), Dragon Roll (no heat, dull flavour) and the Mango (spicy, very prolific, but very unpleasant flavour). I’d go so far as to say I hated the Mango chilli and would never want it near my garden again. What was even more annoying was that it grew like crazy, was totally pest-resistant, and we were inundated with the little monsters. At least it was attractive. Mango and Purple Maui might be worth growing for their decorative fruit, I guess, if there were not other chillies equally pretty and with much better flavour.

My favourites this year have been (in no particular order):

• Jalapeño – it’s a classic for a reason. Delicious, versatile, warm but not too hot, great for eating fresh, pickling, in salsas and curries, resistant to pests, and keeps on producing for months;
• Curly Toenail – of course, the name is a winner, and the way it grows is so fun – long and skinny and curling up at the end. But it also tastes lovely, with a nice heat – but not too much. Versatile for Mexican and Indian food. Not super prolific, but enough to make it worthwhile. I overwintered this from last year’s Chilli Festival and it has kept on producing.
• Anaheim – a mild, large chilli with a delicious flavour, great for Mexican food. For the flavour fans, not the heat freaks.
• Devil’s Tongue – a lovely, hot, vibrant yellow-orange chilli with great flavour. Spicy, tasty, bumpy, prolific, one DT will heat a whole curry easily. Not very easy to find, worth seeking out from specialty suppliers.
• Cayenne – just so pretty. What we think of when we think of ‘chilli’ – long, red, glossy, gorgeous. Warm and delicious. The classic chilli.
• Habanero – a hot little monster, used to be considered the hottest in the world at 500,000 Scovilles (the heat measurement for chillies) until it was usurped by the new range of extreme chillies (i.e. the Carolina Reaper). But I prefer it to the extreme chillies because it has a lovely flavour and brightness, in addition to the heat.
• Mustard Habanero – a variety of habanero, yellow-orange in colour instead of the darker red-orange of the traditional habanero. The fruit is also larger. Flavour and heat profile is similar, but I love it because it is so pretty as well.
• Fresno – Similar to a jalapeño, but larger and fatter, and quite hot when it ripens to red. Delicious sliced up on a pizza, if you like your pizza with a little heat.
• Scorpion – Hot, fresh tasting and quite juicy, pest-resistant, and prolific.

I won’t bother growing the Serrano, Siam, Bhut Jolokia, or Joe’s Long again next year – they were either just ‘ok’ or were too susceptible to pests to make the grade, in my opinion. Siam grew really well, but I didn’t enjoy the texture – it had a tough, waxy texture that I found a bit unpleasant, although it tasted alright. Joe’s Long was pleasantly flavoured and definitely attractive, but was not hot enough. And Serrano and Bhut Jolokia just attracted too many bugs. In fact, after I publish this, I am heading out to dump the last of these in the compost.

Growing Chillies

I grow almost all chillies from seed, purchased either from Happy Valley seeds or the Digger’s Club. I did buy a couple of plants from the Big Green Shed or from the 2023 and 2024 Chilli Festivals, including the Scorpion, Anaheim, Fresno, and Curly Toenail. The Chilli Festival is great for finding some unusual or hard to find plants.

I raise the seedlings in tubs in the greenhouse in August/September, pricking them out when they are a few centimetres high and hardening them off in single ten centimetre pots. Once they are well-established, I plant them out into larger pots.

Chillies are really easy to grow both in pots and in the garden bed. I mostly grow them in pots on my balcony and in the greenhouse. Next season, I will skip the greenhouse and put them on the balcony only – while they love the warmth of the greenhouse and grow prolifically there, in that warm, humid space they are more likely to fall prey to pests, namely aphids, white fly and the little jerk spider mite. On the open air balcony, they are less productive but are largely pest-free.

In my experience, some chilli varieties are more prone to pests than others. This year, the Bhut Jolokia (also known as the Ghost Chilli) and the Serrano have been most pest-prone – we have barely had a single fruit from these plants. The most productive and pest resistant have been the jalapeño – which is great, because it’s also the most useful – and the Scorpion. I bought that last year at the Chilli Festival, and it overwintered really well and then exploded into a profusion of pale orange and very hot little fruit. We find that half a Scorpion is lovely in a pasta dish; a whole Scorpion is good for something spicier, like a curry. Don’t pickle them though! I make a delicious lime and fresh chilli pickle that usually requires green chillies (jalapenos or other fresh green chilli). I ran out of the full quantity for a double recipe, and topped up with ripe Scorpions. I think my husband burned a hole in his oesophagus.

Chillies are fairly un-fussy plants: grow in full sun in a decent sized pot (although they will not really complain if the pot is not very big), pop some slow-release fertiliser for veggies in the pot, and give them a regular liquid feed every two weeks. If you are growing them in a pot, make sure to water them daily so they don’t dry out.

You can overwinter your favourites at the end of the growing season. In March, cut them back hard, and leave them in a sheltered place. Then wait for them to re-shoot in Spring, and then repot with fresh potting mix. If you don’t want to give them that space, save the seeds from a ripe chilli by drying them out on a plate, and save in an envelope, and plant out again next year. I will be doing that with my Anaheim, Jalapeño, Fresno, Cayenne, Curly Toenail, Mustard Habanero and Habanero, and Devil’s Tongue this year.

Is there a chilli variety that you love to grow – or one that you really dislike? Let me know – I am always looking for new chilli plants to try!