The Red Savina is one of the hottest peppers with a high heat profile and tastes similar to habanero peppers.
If you have gone to any pepper festival or specialty markets, there is a higher chance that you have come across this Red Savina pepper.
These are the super hot versions of habanero peppers. And roughly, five times hotter than the regular habanero peppers.
Are you wondering how to eat them? No worries, this post talks about the Red Savina pepper’s heat, its Scoville scale units, and the various ideas to include them in the food.
What is Red Savina?
Discovering the hottest pepper is one of the fascination among the pepper cultivars. And many cultivars worldwide are successful in experimenting and breeding hot peppers.
Dave Witt(author of The complete chile pepper book), says this chili pepper was first bred by Frank Garcia of GNS Spices from California.
The cultivar successfully achieved this new chili pepper with extra hot, spicy, dark, pungent, and heavier than its origin, pepper-habanero.
The Red Savina belongs to the capsicum Chinese family. And during 1994, this chili pepper was declared as the world’s hottest pepper. Actually, for twelve years and until 2006, it was crowned as World’s hottest pepper.
How does this Red Savina look?
Its glossy red color is the specialty of Red Savina. It has a thin wall structure with clustered seeds and a thin rib.
It usually measures 2 inches tall and 1.5 inches at the shoulder. It has a lantern shape with a pod-like structure on the base.
Like most of the pepper varieties, the young Savina pepper looks in vibrant green color and turns red as it matures.
What do they taste like?
The matured Red Savina pepper tastes fruity with an intense heat and has a complex sweet flavor.
With the first instance, the palate senses the fruity flavor, and the heat spreads slowly but intensely throughout the palate. Scorching heat persists in the skin and may last for about 20 minutes.
What’s the Scoville unit of Red Savina?
In 1994, the Red Savina habanero pepper held the title of hottest pepper in the world in Guinness World Records. And measured 577,000 SHU on the Scoville scale.
A simple guideline to understand its real heat, regular habanero measured at 100,000-350,000 SHUs. And Jalapeno pepper measures at 2500-5000 SHUs on the Scoville scale.
How hot are these peppers?
It's five times hotter than the habanero, 230 times hotter than the jalapeno peppers, and 1283 times hotter than the Red hot sauce.
Adding them directly to food may turn the dish smocking hot. Hence blend them in the hot sauces, or the salsa and enjoy its natural flavor and the heat.
How to use them in recipes?
Having these Red Savina peppers as the star ingredient, multiple recipes are made possible. You can incorporate it into any dish you wish to heat up.
But with a caution note, always start with very little quantity for the right balance of heat. And you may add in later to match your personal preference.
In the hot sauce recipes. One of the best things chili pepper lovers can do is make hot sauce. Growing Red Savina habanero peppers in your backyard is a great way to save money while making a sauce precisely to your taste.
In the chili and salsa. A bit of habanero pepper is good for spicing homemade condiments like chili or salsa. The spice kick and the fruity flavors are fabulous results.
In the spice blend. Dry them and make your spice blend with other ingredients. It is an excellent way to store the Red Savina peppers for over a year.
As the powder. On the other hand, you may dry the peppers and powder them. Mix with any dish later. The powdered form of this pepper has a longer shelf life.
Red Savina image source: Flickr
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