Hungarian wax chiles are pretty darn hot by most peoples standards. What I was hoping to do here was tame the heat down to reveal more of the flavor of the chile, the earthiness, the fruitiness, those unctuous flavor notes that are overlooked when all you perceive is heat. I think this is something that many miss with chiles in general. The habanero is a perfect example of this, wherein there's a lot of interesting flavor if you can avoid burning out your tastebuds in the process (for example
[1] [2]). The only chiles which have beguiled me in this area are the hungarian wax and the serrano, both of which seemed to have persistent enough heat that rarely have I found the ability to perceive any evident flavor complexity. After having made some progress with revealing the hidden flavor of serranos (examples
[1] [2]), to date the hungarian wax still torments me and I've really only used it for it's inate
Scoville units (examples
[1] [2] [3]).
This experiment intended to tame the heat and coax the flavors out of hungarian wax chiles by using the sweetness of the carrot, and the maceration capabilities of Anejo tequilla and lime juice. The results did reveal there's something here as I did get a little bit of fruitiness and the heat was less evident, but overall the heat still was most the evident gustatory element coming of the chile. The Anejo did tame it a bit, moreso than the lime I believe), but after only soaking for 15 minutes I think maybe the chiles deserve some longer maceration or pickling to really make this work.
The salsa combined garlic, carrot, hungarian wax chiles, lime juice, red onion, and a tiny amount of anejo - next time I'll separately soak the chiles in lime / anejo for an hour or two. If anyone has had success with these hot little buggers in a manner that didn't burn your mouth, I'm all ears.
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