9 Caribbean Peppers, From Scotch Bonnet to Scorpion

What are Caribbean peppers?

Mostly Capsicum chinense, the habanero's species, in shapes and heats you won't find anywhere else. UWI researchers in Trinidad group the region's own varieties, Scotch bonnet, Congo, Seven Pot, Scorpion and Pimento among them, under C. chinense, and their DNA work found a distinct Caribbean gene pool¹.

A few non-chinense peppers matter to you here too. USDA lists C. frutescens, the bird pepper, as native to Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Guadeloupe and Grenada⁵, and the cubanelle, a sweet C. annuum, turns up in Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican cooking². So when your recipe from the islands just says "pepper", ask which island it came from before you reach for the hot one.

Which peppers grow in the Caribbean?

The table gives you each one beside its species, its heat and its job in your kitchen. Where no primary source gives a heat figure, the cell says so, and we leave it blank on the chart too.

Seven of the nine peppers in the table are C. chinense, so treat a Caribbean pepper you don't recognise with habanero-level care.

Your market may carry names the table lacks. UWI also names Tiger Teeth, Bonda Majaque and Bazouka among the West Indian varieties¹, and an FAO handbook from the Bahamas pictures Bahamian goat pepper, finger pepper and West Indian Red beside the habanero and Scotch bonnet as the hot peppers you'll meet in the region's markets⁷. None of those has a published heat figure we could read, so you won't see them on the chart yet.

How hot are Caribbean peppers?

From barely warm to among the hottest ever measured, a spread of more than a thousand times. The chart lets you see the region's entries on one log-scale axis.

The habanero sits in the chart so you have a scale; it's the same species as the Scotch bonnet, but UF/IFAS places most of its farming on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula². The two Trinidad scorpions changed hands as record holders: Guinness listed the Butch T at 1,463,700 SHU in March 2011⁸, and NMSU named the Moruga the hottest it had measured in 2012⁴.

Put in kitchen terms, a cubanelle at about 1,000 SHU and a Moruga mean of more than 1,200,000 SHU sit over a thousand times apart. One scorpion pod carries roughly the heat of a thousand cubanelles, so you cut it with gloves on and add it a sliver at a time.

How do you tell a Scotch bonnet from a habanero?

Look at the shoulders of the pod in your hand. Both carry the same 100,000 to 350,000 SHU range³, so heat won't tell you; the shape and the place it grew will.

Scotch bonnet

Habanero

• Three or four lobes in a squat cup-and-saucer shape; Jamaica's top export grade is at least 3.5 cm wide⁹ShapeA lantern with thin, waxy flesh²
• Slightly smaller than a habanero²SizeAbout 0.8 to 2.4 inches long²
• Red or yellow²Ripe colorYellow, orange or red, with white, brown and pink types²
• The Caribbean, Guyana and the Maldives²Grown mainly inMexico's Yucatán Peninsula²

In a recipe, you can swap one for the other at the same weight and expect the same burn. The habanero entry gives its full range if you want to check the numbers yourself.

Where did Caribbean peppers come from?

From the Amazon, long before Columbus. UWI's DNA work traces the Caribbean gene pool to the Upper Amazon, and the university's history department supplied the archaeology that maps two routes onto the islands¹.

The written record starts much later, and you'll find the islands on its first page.

1. 1494

   Hispaniola

   Columbus's physician Diego Álvarez Chanca writes of 'agi', the spice the island's people used, the first written record of chiles.⁶

2. 1776

   Martinique

   Jacquin describes Capsicum chinense from plants grown on the island, naming it for China by mistake.⁶

3. March 2011

   Trinidad Scorpion Butch T

   Listed by Guinness as the hottest chilli at 1,463,700 SHU.⁸

4. February 2012

   Trinidad Moruga Scorpion

   NMSU's study puts its mean above 1.2 million SHU, the highest of five superhots.⁴

The monograph backs the UWI finding: it cites work suggesting that Central American and Caribbean C. chinense came from Upper Amazon progenitors and diverged through isolation⁶. That's why you'll hear a different name on each island for the same species, and why a "Congo pepper" in Trinidad and a "rocotillo" in Puerto Rico can both be C. chinense.

How do Caribbean cooks use their peppers?

Jerk, sofrito, frying and bottled sauce cover most of what you'll cook. The kitchen tiles above show three of those jobs; the checklist adds the rest, each from a source.

The UC Master Gardeners call the Scotch bonnet a staple of Caribbean and West African cooking, for fiery heat with a fruity flavor¹¹. If you want that heat in a bottle, the Caribbean hot sauce style page covers the sauces built on it. The techniques behind the dishes, from roasting to taming a pot that came out too hot, live on the cooking with hot peppers pages.

Is a Caribbean pepper always hot?

No, and the sweet one catches you out if you expect fire. Ají dulce, which UF/IFAS calls native to the Caribbean, shares the Scotch bonnet's species but rates only 500 to 1,500 SHU, with a sweet flavor². At the midpoints that's about 225 times milder than a Scotch bonnet³, and close to a cubanelle.

It even looks like a hot pepper to your eye: UF/IFAS describes a spinning-top shape like a habanero's, with semi-wrinkled skin that goes from dark green to light green or yellow and then orange-red². UF/IFAS also notes that some fully sweet Scotch bonnet types grow on the islands².

How do you pick and keep fresh Scotch bonnets?

You can judge a pod by its skin and its stalk. Jamaica's growing handbook describes what a mature, export-grade pod looks like, and how long it lasts once picked⁹.

The Brooklyn growers who sell them found the pods hold well between 45 and 50 °F¹⁰, which is a cool pantry or the warmest drawer of your fridge.

Can you grow Caribbean peppers away from the tropics?

Yes, if you start early and put some heat under your seed tray. A Northeast SARE trial in Brooklyn (USDA zone 7b) got 13 to 15 weeks of picking from C. chinense plants set out around June 1¹⁰; the Jamaican handbook supplies the timings from seed to first pod⁹.

1. 1

   Sow indoors 8–10 weeks before your last frost

   C. chinense germinates more slowly than bell peppers or jalapeños and wants 80–90 °F, so give yours a heat mat. In Jamaica, seedlings come up in 7 to 12 days.⁹¹⁰

2. 2

   Transplant at 5–6 weeks

   Seedlings are ready at about 12–15 cm tall, after 5 to 7 days of hardening off outdoors.⁹

3. 3

   Give each plant room

   Set plants at least 24 inches apart, 30–36 inches if you can. They can reach 36 inches or more, so stake or cage them.¹⁰

4. 4

   Expect flowers at about 40 days

   Your plants flower about 40 days after transplanting, and picking usually starts about 12 weeks after transplanting.⁹

5. 5

   Pick the first round green if you want more

   If you take the first pods green, you raise the plant's total yield, though most buyers prefer fully ripe ones.¹⁰

Plants that big need the spacing: at 30 inches apart, a 10-foot row holds four of them, and four healthy plants give a family more Scotch bonnets than most of us can use fresh.