Purple peppers

[LiberalEsto]

I bought a very pretty pepper plant at a yard sale today. It's covered with little inch-long upright lavender-purple peppers and tiny purple flowers that look adorable. I asked the lady selling it if they were edible, and she said they were, but her English was very limited so we left it at that.

Just to be on the safe side, I Googled "purple peppers" and found out that these are edible, but rather hot.

Idiot that I am, I decided to pick one and take a tiny nibble from it. Maybe the size of half a small black peppercorn.

Two glasses of milk, a glass of water, an ice cube and a lot of huffing and puffing later, I concluded that these adorable little purple peppers were edible only if you have a mouth and tongue made of steel. :grr:

It's a lovely ornamental plant, but if you happen to acquire one, use extreme caution about eating the peppers, and definitely don't let children mess with them.

[Kolesar]

1. My local farm provided me with a "Czech Black" pepper that is a milder jalapeno

I understand that there are four main branches of the chili pepper family. This one is with the jalapeno and is a derivative variety of the jalapen: It is the size and shape of a jalapeno, but has inky-black fruits and beautiful purple flowers. I think of peppers as ornamentals. It is mild enough that I can eat it raw without a blink. Normal jalapenos are beyond the threshold of what I can eat raw. I usually cook with them or dry them and make crushed peppers of jalapenos.

Unfortunately, "Pepperman" does not have a web site, so I cannot pull up a pic.

[China_cat]

2. Sounds like the peppers my 'serrano' plants put out.

Purple flowers, small fruit that turned purple as they ripened instead of red. The plants were sold to me as serranos but they certainly don't act like it.