We've discovered the joy of Padron peppers!

[NRaleighLiberal]

This is the second time we've used our Padron peppers as a pre-dinner tapas.



they are a small green semi-hot pepper. As a tapas dish, you put a bit of olive oil in a pan, heat until very hot, add the peppers, some sea salt, and let them blacken on all sides.

Talk about addictive! And, as we found out, the bigger ones are really hot (you need to be sure to avoid the seeds)....

But...yum!

Anyone else tried this?

[MiddleFingerMom]

1. No, never even heard of them (and in Arizona, we have access to a large number of hot varieties).

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They LOOK delicious.
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I like hot peppers (though not to the point of pain)... so I've never understood
the concept of de-seeding and de-veining peppers.
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WHA-U-DOOON!?!?!?!? YOU'RE THROWING AWAY THE BEST PART!!!.
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.

[Warpy]

2. Same here in NM

I haven't seen them in the grocery. That means they'll get here eventually, when I first moved here it was hard to find habaneros.

[Warpy]

3. De seeding, yeah. De veining? Never!

What I might do with these is blacken them without the salt, steam them for a few minutes in a covered bowl, slip the blackened skins off and enjoy them on tortilla chips.

I do that with roasted green chile here, the chiles that got kind of destroyed by the roasting drum. There is not much better eating than freshly roasted green chiles and chips.

[NRaleighLiberal]

4. recipe

http://fruitguys.com/almanac/2012/09/05/tapas-style-padron-peppers

they are easy to grow - we have a plant in a 5 gallon pot and already harvested a few dozen!

[Denninmi]

5. They are from Spain.

Hence as foreign to the SW US as to here. Not well known, yet. I've seen them in a few seed catalogs, but only really know of them because chef Jose Andres talked about them on his PBS cooking series Made in Spain, and because there was some other series with Gwenyth Paltrow, Mario Battalgia (not spelled right, I'm sure) and Mark Bittman taking a gastronomic tour of Spain.

[Retrograde]

6. About 1 in 10 is hot

They've been available in my area - SF Bay - for several years, and they're addictive. There are more growers now (used to be only one, in East Palo Alto, who specialized in Spanish peppers). I've found on the average 1 in 10 is hot, and not just the large ones!

[NRaleighLiberal]

7. Mine got a bit too big, and I would say 80% were quite hot, though pleasantly so...

a quick heat that dissipated pretty fast. Just a lovely flavor - the roasted, char green pepper flavor with the oil and salt...addictive! Just fed my plant heavily again today so it pumps some more out - will plant several next year!

[The empressof all]

8. I love them!

My Husband who normally loves spicy foods thinks they are too hot! He must always get the hot ones because I think they are wonderful and I'm not big on really spicy peppers. I make them just the way you suggested. They appear in the grocery here about once a year and are gone within the week.....