Peppers add color to your dishes, especially salads.
With everyone being so health conscious these days and looking for ways to eat better, more and more people are turning to salads and finding ways to enhance their flavor. Bell peppers and pickled peppers that people use on salads belong to the Capiscum family, typically indigenous to Mexico. You can use any of the peppers from this family -- it just depends on the particular flavor you wish to layer onto your salad.
Bell Peppers
Bell peppers are larger, squat peppers that come in various colors like yellow, red or orange, but more typically are green. These sweet peppers are large enough for you to use for recipes, whether you use them raw or cooked. You can stuff cooked bell peppers with ingredients such as rice, tomato sauce, meat, cheese, sausage and seafood. When raw, the crisp flesh of the pepper adds a sweet crunch with zero heat to salads and sandwiches.
Pepperoncini and Banana Peppers
Greek pepperoncini are also known as Golden Greek Peppers, and add a juicy bite with mild heat to salads, sandwiches and antipasti. Pepperoncini are typically a vibrant yellowish-green color, are oblong and retain a crunch even when pickled. Similarly, banana peppers are oblong, bigger and often yellow in color -- but are not pepperoncini. You can pickle banana peppers for sandwiches, or stuff them like you'd stuff a bell pepper.
Cherry Peppers and Pimentos
A shorter, squat cherry pepper adds a pop of spice and heat to your salad. Pickled cherry peppers reach the same levels of heat as pepperoncini, but offer a brighter red color to add to your dish. Pimentos -- thick-fleshed sweet peppers -- offer that same vibrant red color to salads, such as a Southern Pea salad, which includes mayonnaise, peas, sweet pickles, eggs and cheese or deli meats like the pimento loaf.
Jalapenos
Whereas bell peppers, banana peppers and pepperoncini are sweet to mild in heat, the jalapeno has a more significant bite. The Scoville system measures the capsaicin in the pepper, and the jalapeno has a rating of 5,000 units, compared to the 100 to 500 rating of the pepperonicini or pimento or the 0 rating of the bell. Jalapenos add spice to salads whether pickled or fresh. You can curb some of the heat and keep the flavor of the pepper by trimming the ribs and seeds, which retains the pepper's heat.
Tags: banana peppers, color your, heat salads, heat salads sandwiches, mild heat
