Tien Tsin chile peppers are named after the province of China in which they are harvested. Don’t let the cute appearance of these bright red shiny peppers fool you they are extremely hot. Their heat ranges from 50,000 – 75,000 Scoville heat units.
What do Tien Tsin peppers taste like and look like?
Think small cayenne peppers with extra pop and you’ll be on the right path for both looks and tastes. Tien Tsin chilies are branch-like thin, one to two inches in length. They age from green to a vibrant red, at which time they are picked and dried for their typical usage
The Tien Tsin pepper’s slimness is very reminiscent of cayenne, and it has a neutral, almost musty, flavor behind the heat similar to cayenne too. This is not a complex chili in terms of flavor; the heat is the star here. And that certainly colors how it is used in the kitchen.
These chilies seem extremely hot in Chinese food. How hot are Tien Tsin peppers really?
They do seem extremely hot, but in context to other chilies, they fall in the high-end of the medium range of the Scoville scale. They have a similar floor to Thai peppers (50,000 Scoville heat units or SHU), but their ceiling isn’t quite as high, reaching 75,000 SHU where Thai peppers can jump to 100,000 SHU. In terms of our jalapeño reference point, the Tien Tsin ranges from six to thirty times hotter than a jalapeño. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but certainly nowhere near the likes of a habanero.
So why do they sometimes taste surprisingly hot? Tien Tsin chilies are often used whole in dishes, with seeds intact. And it’s a chili’s seeds, along with the membrane, that contain a large part of its heat. Remove the seeds and membrane (or pith), and your range of spiciness jumps well down. So if you bite into one of those Chinese red peppers in your stir fry, you’re getting the full force of the pepper’s potential heat.
Chinese Red Pepper “Tien Tsin” pod test
FAQ
How many Scoville units is a Tianjin pepper?
What is the spiciest Chinese chili pepper?
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‘Xiao Mi La Pepper’
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Species
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Capsicum frutescens
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Cultivar
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‘Xiao Mi La’
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Heat
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Very hot
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Scoville scale
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75,000 SHU
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What are the hottest Chinese chilis?
How hot are Sichuan chillies?