Brian Reinhart (2:09)

We've got some kind of bells. This year we're growing shishito peppers for the first time. We love fish peppers. They're very tiny and they have racing stripes. They're beautiful.

Willa Paskin (2:19)

One kind of hot pepper Brian doesn't grow, though, is the jalapeno, a chili originally cultivated in Veracruz, Mexico. He shops for those at the supermarket. And a little while ago, he started to notice something.

Brian Reinhart (2:32)

I kept buying jalapenos in the grocery store, and then more and more frequently, it just tasted like a bell pepper. There was almost nothing to it. It was a very simple, straightforward pepper flavor in jalapeno.

Willa Paskin (2:45)

After jalapeno, it seemed to Brian like the spice, spice was gone. And at first he thought it was just him.

Brian Reinhart (2:52)

Maybe I've become conditioned because now I eat serrano peppers and now I cook with habanero peppers sometimes, and maybe I've just developed a greater heat tolerance. And then finally it started to get to the point where I, I felt like I must be going crazy. And then I started asking people, have you had this experience with jalapenos also? I, I'd be cooking and I'd hold one up and I'd say, what's wrong with these things? Have you noticed this? And more and more people started saying, yeah, they're basically, there's nothing to them. And then I said, you know what we can do? And I pulled out my phone, I texted, I think, like four or five different chefs all at once.

Willa Paskin (3:30)

The answers came back quickly.

Brian Reinhart (3:32)

The first one was, yes, definitely, they're less hot than they used to be. The second one was, I tell my cooks my hands must be too sweet because I can't make the salsa hot enough anymore.

Willa Paskin (3:43)

It wasn't just the taste that seemed different. Some people noticed that jalapenos looked different too.

Brian Reinhart (3:49)

I mean, you can just look at old menus and cartoon type imagery where jalapenos used to have a big bend, like almost a 90 degree twist in the middle. But now most of the jalapenos at the store are straight.

Willa Paskin (4:03)

Like, what did you think was going on?

Brian Reinhart (4:06)

I think my working theory was jalapeno growing operations. We're prioritizing, growing them properly, keeping them happy compared to us at home, where maybe we go out of town for a weekend and we forget about them and then we come back and they've been completely neglected and they become spicier because of that.

Gustavo Arellano (4:25)

Right.

Willa Paskin (4:25)

So you took what you knew, which is that, like, peppers are spicy or under stress, and where you're like, these are the most well taken care of peppers. Yeah. So they're not that spicy.

Brian Reinhart (4:34)

Yeah. We need a farm to just treat their peppers like absolute garbage. Just leave them for months and months and come back to them and say, oh, my gosh, I forgot we had these and then sell them.

Willa Paskin (4:47)

Brian knew that if he was going to figure out the truth. He needed to run his theory by an expert. He immediately thought of New Mexico State University, which is a whole institute dedicated to chili peppers. He picked out one of their faculty members, dialed her up and told her everything you've just heard.

Brian Reinhart (5:03)

And she started off very kindly and she said, I've heard these complaints before. You're not the first. And I felt really good for a moment. And then she said, but it goes a lot deeper and there's a lot better explanation available for you. And then she said, the peppers are designed that way. And I said, excuse me. And she said, well, it's completely on purpose. And that's when the story of the great chili pepper conspiracy really started to unfold.

Willa Paskin (5:49)

This is Dakota Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. The shiny dark green jalapeno is the workhorse of hot peppers. They're in hot sauces, enchiladas and salsas. They're canned, pickled fresh and smoked into Chipotle's. And they outsell all other hot peppers in the United States. But these everyday chilies are a scientific and sociological marvel, a complicated testament to the American love affair with Mexican food sitting right there on the grocery store shelf. In today's episode, we're going to tell the decades long saga of the jalapeno and its flavor fluctuating spice levels. It's a story about how this one pepper helped American pallets progress from mild to medium to hot and then couldn't keep up. So today on Decoder Ring, who took the heat out of the jalapeno. So to test out his theory, Ryan Reinhardt had called an expert at New.

Brian Reinhart (7:06)

Mexico State University, someone named Stephanie Walker, because she had been the chair of the chili pepper conference.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (7:13)

Yes, I think a lot of calls about jalapenos lately.

Willa Paskin (7:17)

We call Dr. Stephanie Walker too. She's a professor and extension vegetable specialist and she got back to us during a break from planting.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (7:24)

This is the time of year where we're putting our various chili experiments in the field.

Willa Paskin (7:29)

Turns out, like Brian, Stephanie wasn't born with spice in her life.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (7:33)

I didn't, didn't know anything about chili peppers or heat. When we moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico, when I was starting middle school, I started eating chili. I developed it, a, a love for it. And then I actually, after I got my bachelor's degree, I went to work in a chili pepper processing facility. And that's where I really fell in love with chili peppers.

Willa Paskin (7:55)

So have jalapenos gotten less spicy?

Dr. Stephanie Walker (7:59)

So in my opinion, yes.

Willa Paskin (8:03)

And to really understand why, I asked Stephanie to start at the beginning. What is the thing that makes chili spicy?

Dr. Stephanie Walker (8:10)

Oh, capsaicin. Capsaicin and very closely related chemicals are only made in mem. Members of the Capsicum genus. So chili peppers are very unique in having that type of pungency that you experience when you eat chili peppers.

Willa Paskin (8:25)

I. I actually am really interested in, like, how jalapenos, but maybe more largely like chili peppers, grow, like, and also how they're bred. Like, how do we have all these different kinds of chili peppers to begin with? Are they just naturally occurring or some of them.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (8:40)

Oh, well, actually, they've been created by humans. So, you know, the original chili pepper, it's called the mother of all chili peppers, is the chiltepine type. So they're small, usually round or slightly elongated peppers that grow on bushes. And even though the heat kind of evolved in chili peppers to dissuade mammals from eating them, human mammals discovered they love this heat sensation. So humans then started the selecting process. So this goes back thousands of years, and just through humans actively selecting, we have the vast array of chili pepper varieties that we see today.

Willa Paskin (9:16)

And that vast array of different human selected breeds of peppers is what Stephanie emphasized to Brian.

Brian Reinhart (9:24)

The point she made to me was, the jalapeno is a family. There are so many different varieties of jalapeno. It is not just a pepper.

Willa Paskin (9:32)

And humans are still actively selecting when it comes to chili pepper varieties. In fact, it's key to what's happened to the jalapeno. In the early 1980s, demand for Mexican food was growing all over America. Sales at Mexican restaurants had doubled in just a few years. But consumer tastes varied widely.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (9:52)

Even though there's a lot of folks out there who love very, very hot jalapenos, there's a lot who don't like hot.

Willa Paskin (9:58)

Food companies wanted to be able to sell products at every level of spice. But there was this big problem, one Stephanie is very familiar with because she was working at a chili pepper processor.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (10:11)

Back then, a big issue was predicting heat level for chili peppers. Predicting pungency is hard. So the pungency level of a different chili pepper variety is based on genetics but also the environment. When we did vats of salsa, we wanted to have it mild, medium, or hot. And if you happen to get, like, a load of jalapenos that was extra hot, we might mislabel a whole day's run of medium or mild salsa.

Brian Reinhart (10:41)

So.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (10:41)

So we actually had a program where our field department would go out and pre sample fields before they were harvested. So we could get a good idea. How hot are these peppers? How do we need to adjust the formulation when we make mild, medium, or hot salsa? And we discovered it didn't work. The chili peppers was just too unpredictable.

Willa Paskin (10:59)

But there is a more predictable substance, an extract called oleoresin capsaicin, which is.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (11:06)

Pure capsaicin extracted from hot chili peppers, basically.

Willa Paskin (11:10)

And then it's just like a liquid that you can.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (11:12)

It's a very, very dangerous liqu. Yes. Yeah, the ingredient buckets have the skull and crossbones on it. And yeah, it's like pure, pure heat. So it's. Yeah, you don't want to mess with it.

Willa Paskin (11:23)

Oleoresin capsaicin is the active ingredient in pepper spray. It makes it possible to take something mild and make it spicy, whereas you can never take something spicy and make it mild. It's just like salt. You can add more, but you can't take any away. So a mild jalapeno, from the manufacturer's perspective, is actually a lot more versatile than a spicy one. And so, as Brian Reinhart learned, companies thought growing a mild pepper could solve their problem.

Brian Reinhart (11:54)

Okay, well, if we can find a way to make sure that they're all mild, then we can choose the spice level. So as this problem became more widely known in the industry, agriculture departments and breeders started working on how can we standardize the jalapeno pepper and get something that hits all the attributes that we want?

Willa Paskin (12:15)

And one of the people they called was a chili expert named Dr. Benigno Viallon, who goes by Ben, among other names.

Dr. Benigno Viallon (12:23)

You know, they call me Dr. Pepper, you know, so I was the man for the job.

Willa Paskin (12:28)

Ben's 88. He was raised on a vegetable farm in South Texas, and he has degrees in plant breeding, genetics, and pathology. He also worked at Texas A and M for 30 years. And that's where he was when the salsa industry reached out.

Dr. Benigno Viallon (12:41)

They came to me, Pace Foods, all El Paso, La Victoria, and all of the big guys that came to me, and they said if we had a mild jalapeno, we could sell a lot more salsa picante with less heat. So I said, well, we already have it. We've been working since 1972.

Willa Paskin (13:00)

In the 70s, Ben had been trying to breed a virus resistant bell pepper by crossing it with different peppers, including jalapenos. After a lot of cross breeding, he realized he'd inadvertently created a low heat jalapeno.

Dr. Benigno Viallon (13:15)

Took us about 10 years to get back to the jalapeno flavor. It's not an easy thing to do because every pepper, no matter which it has its own flavor profile.

Willa Paskin (13:25)

And they said that they wanted it because customers said that they didn't want spice.

Dr. Benigno Viallon (13:29)

That's right. People don't like to get their mouth burned and all that kind of stuff. And so they said, why don't you release a mild jalapeno? And so a couple of years later, we did that.

Willa Paskin (13:42)

Low heat pepper was released in the early 1980s as the TAM Jalapeno. TAM stands for Texas A and M. And it seemed to do exactly what the processing plants wanted.

Brian Reinhart (13:53)

It was controllably mildly hot. It was resistant to bugs. It didn't develop kind of gnarly black spots, and it wasn't so curved. It's a glorious little invention.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (14:07)

It was a huge, huge help to industry because suddenly you could get jalapenos. You could predict what the formulation was going to be.

Dr. Benigno Viallon (14:14)

They were able to give you the mild, medium and hot salsa. And that's when the salsa industries really started booming. Their sales went up not only for the processing industry, but the fresh market also. By 1990, the United States outsold ketchup to the one with the mild salsa.

Willa Paskin (14:34)

Things kicked up even more in the early 2000s when the TAM2 came out, an even milder, more predictable pepper developed by Ben's successor at Texas a and M. 60% of jalapenos go to processing plants. So that's what farmers prioritize. And so mild jalapenos became the dominant cross crop, so useful for mass produced salsa. They've trickled into the produce aisle too. And this seems to be happening more and more, according both to Brian's taste buds and even to those of Ben Viallon, the man who created the mild jalapeno in the first place.

Dr. Benigno Viallon (15:09)

I don't like the ones at the store because they're hybrids and they, a lot of them don't have any heat at all.

Willa Paskin (15:15)

You don't like the ones at the store?

Dr. Benigno Viallon (15:18)

No, because they don't even have flavors.

Willa Paskin (15:21)

I asked Brian how he felt when Stephanie explained that his experience was the result of a deliberate, decades long effort to grow milder jalapenos.

Brian Reinhart (15:31)

I definitely felt like I was being shown the man behind the curtain. I felt like I was talking to somebody who was telling me that they knew what really happened to JFK or where the aliens are. Nobody's been hiding this information. Nobody's been conspiring with this information, but somehow we just missed it.

Willa Paskin (15:52)

And maybe part of the reason we missed it is because it's not the first time something like this has happened. What's happened to the jalapeno has happened before. In fact, it's happened over and over again.

Gustavo Arellano (16:23)

First and foremost, Americans have been obsessed with Mexican food from the moment they encountered it.

Willa Paskin (16:28)

Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the LA Times and the author of Taco USA How Mexican Food Conquered America.

Gustavo Arellano (16:37)

Mexican food first starts getting into the American consciousness really in the 1880s, but explodes in the 1890s. And you had two dishes in particular that it happen. One of them were tamales. Tamales are, of course, the quintessential Mexican food. On the other hand, you have chile con carne.

Willa Paskin (16:56)

In the plazas of San Antonio, women known as chili queens opened all night open air restaurants serving up bowlfuls as guitars played and tamale street vendors hawked their wares all over cities like San Francisco.

Gustavo Arellano (17:10)

And Americans were just so enticed by the scene of it. But more importantly, they were enticed by the food. And the American media got curious about them. And so you started seeing these dispatches in publications like the Atlantic, like Harper's Weekly.

Willa Paskin (17:23)

How are they describing them? Like, what are they saying about them?

Gustavo Arellano (17:26)

They always, they always end up obsessing on the spice. You have these stereotypes like that it tastes like the fires of hell. But they're not disparaging it. They're not disparaging it. They are praising it, but warning people in advance, hey, this is going to be hot.

Willa Paskin (17:44)

The dishes became even more well known after the 1893 Chicago World Fair.

Gustavo Arellano (17:49)

And that's arguably where Mexican food had its nationwide debut. The city of Chicago is awash with tamale vendors. Chicago is also the meatpacking capital of the United States. It's also the canning capital. So as this is happening, these big companies, they get the brilliant idea of packing tamales in a can and packing chile con carne in a can. They then spread around the rest of the United States and Americans gobble it up.

Dr. Benigno Viallon (18:19)

There's a man made famous by his hot tamales.

Gustavo Arellano (18:25)

So those were the two first famous dishes that Americans got obsessed over. And then every decade, everything that I just told you repeats every decade you have Americans, quote, unquote, discovering something at a restaurant, in travel somewhere. They become obsessed with it. Entrepreneurs then spread it around the rest of the United States. Americans love it, eat it to the point where it becomes assimilated into the American diet. And then Americans say, okay, what's next? I want something more, quote, unquote, authenticity. It happens almost every decade.

Willa Paskin (19:02)

It happens in the 1900s with chili powder in the 1920s with rice and beans. And then entrepreneurs sell the country on margaritas and fajitas and especially on tacos.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (19:13)

Watch us make your food afresh.

Gustavo Arellano (19:21)

And onward and onward. It has been a slow but steady march, march of Mexican food conquering American palates and stomachs.

Willa Paskin (19:28)

When the food or the dish or the ingredient becomes, like, so omnipresent, does there start to be this conversation about, like, it's not as good or.

Gustavo Arellano (19:36)

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's. It's partly true, though. And a lot of this does have to do with the mass production of the cuisine. I mean, look, when you're going to mass produce anything, you have to sacrifice certain attributes. You have to commodify everything. So people who grow ingredients for Mexican food in the United States have always modified their flavor so they could become more popular. You're talking about jalapenos right now. But in Mexico, remember, tequila can only come from five states. In Mexico, it's a protected designation. Well, in the 1940s, these tequila producers realized, hey, Americans are starting to come to Mexico in record numbers. They're liking our tequila, but they find it too harsh. Let's change the recipe. So they changed the recipe to make it more palatable to Americans. And we all know what happened with tequila becomes a huge, huge sensation. To the point now, of course, where you're getting these same tequila companies. Now you have tequila companies saying, we need. We need to make tequila for Mexicans. And of course, the Americans don't want the Americanized tequila anymore. They want the Mexicanized tequila.

Willa Paskin (20:43)

Well, so, I mean, it sounds like there's this kind of paradox, right? Like there's this growing taste for spiciness or for tequila for something. And then it starts to take off. And then this businesses are like, oh, we actually need to get even bigger. So we have to standardize even more. And then it does get bigger, and it is really popular. But it opens up space for certain consumers to be like, no, no, we want, like the first thing you mentioned.

Gustavo Arellano (21:07)

Paradox. That's the best way of putting it. The American consumer, at first, they want something that's watered down. They accept it. You have an entire industry being created to match what they wanted originally. But then the American gets inured to that modified flavor profile, and then that's when they want more. But by then, it's too late.

Willa Paskin (21:32)

And that's the story of jalapenos, too. In the latter part of the 20th century, Americans became interested in salsas and the peppers that go into them, the.

Gustavo Arellano (21:42)

Jalapeno immediately resonated with American palates. The name itself is just so intriguing. Jalapeno. Jalapeno. You know, the American just gets so intrigued by foreign words. And jalapeno. I mean, God, you want to talk about a Mexican word? Try jalapeno. The J is pronounced like a ja. Then you have the little tilde, of course, on top, the little squiggly thing in the nice, which turns into an ene. And then if you really want to go deep track, jalapeno refers to the town of Jalapa in the state of Veracruz. And Jalapa, just to confuse Americans more, is with an X. So it's just the name itself is so intriguing. And this is all, by the way, before you actually taste it. And then you taste it. I mean, you have to put yourself in the mindset of Americans in the 60s and 70s, when Mexican food is still not where it is today. Of course they're going to get intrigued.

Willa Paskin (22:39)

And they wanted it in their salsas and hot sauces, as long as it wasn't too hot. So breeders developed mild peppers for processors, and suddenly they were everywhere.

Gustavo Arellano (22:51)

PE's thick and chunky salsa puts only fresh jalapenos in every jar for that bold taste. Born in San Antonio.

Dr. Benigno Viallon (22:58)

This stuff's made in New York City.

Gustavo Arellano (23:01)

New York City.

Willa Paskin (23:03)

But as non Mexicans ate more and more of this stuff, their palates changed in turn.

Gustavo Arellano (23:08)

There was a point where Americans or non Mexicans could not stand heat at all. But yes, as the decades have gone on, Americans have gotten a tolerance for salsa spice. And Americans are starting to escalate their heat to the point now, of course, where we have the hot ones and you have kids just loving all of it. And adults, too, for that matter. Americans more than anything. You don't see Mexicans doing these fucking contests where like, oh, I'm gonna eat 15 Carolina reapers at once.

Brian Reinhart (23:34)

What you just ate is the hottest, most disgusting hot sauce in the world.

Gustavo Arellano (23:38)

That's such an American thing. It's kind of funny and kind of pathetic, too.

Willa Paskin (23:42)

I feel like I'm gonna die.

Gustavo Arellano (23:43)

I know.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (23:44)

I get it.

Willa Paskin (23:45)

This is the actor Jennifer Lawrence on the popular YouTube show Hot Ones, where guests eat increasingly spicy hot stuff. I don't know what's in nothing else.

Gustavo Arellano (23:55)

I know.

Dr. Benigno Viallon (23:56)

I know.

Willa Paskin (23:57)

Is my face okay?

Gustavo Arellano (24:00)

That is just masochism. I don't want that.

Willa Paskin (24:02)

Do you? Have you noticed that jalapenos in particular have gotten mild?

Gustavo Arellano (24:05)

No, because for me, the jalapeno was never spicy to begin with. The hottest Jalapenos are not that hot. But so jalapenos, historically, at least in my family, you would use them for the flavor. A good jalapeno has a good, verdant flavor to it. Very fresh, very invigorating flavor, the way other chiles don't have. But there's nothing wrong with putting a little bit of spice into it. I. I'll. I do not take a little bottle of hot sauce with me to diners, but I do take a big, huge serrano. I just went. I just ate out a French bistro the other day. And, like, what was it? I. I had a croak madame yesterday. French. I love French food. They're not going to have any heat. I need a little bit of heat. So I whipped out my serrano. My friend who was with me, he didn't blink because he knows who I am. But the waitress comes in. She's like, oh, did we give you one? I'm like, no. And she was impressed. She's like, okay.

Willa Paskin (24:54)

Do you. Do you ask for a knife? Like, what do you do with it?

Gustavo Arellano (24:56)

Or you just. Oh, with. With. For a chile. The serrano? Hell, no. It's called the chile de morda. A biting chili. So you get it, you eat it, and you eat it like a carrot. That's. Oh, my God. Cutting it up into small, little pieces. That's fun. I mean, you do that. But no, no, no. If you're gonna bring a chile, you eat it. I see them or did that, like, fighting, and it was freaking good. And the owners of the restaurant there would be muse, and I told them, look, your food's absolutely amazing. Don't get me wrong. It was super, super good. But I still need some spice. You know, I'm Mexican.

Willa Paskin (25:27)

For Gustavo, what's happened to Mexican food over and over again is, on the whole, a good thing, because even imperfect Mexican food can bring people together.

Gustavo Arellano (25:37)

I could tell you how loathed Mexicans have always been and how loathe Mexican food was. But now you have kids growing up. Your kids growing up with good hot sauces. You know, people in Southern California, in the American Southwest, in Colorado, white kids growing up with Mexican food as part of their mother's milk, so to speak. And growing up with Mexicans, it does make relationships better between Mexicans and Americans. So I do remain optimistic that Americans will all eventually become Mexicans.

Willa Paskin (26:15)

If you go to a supermarket basically anywhere in America at this point point, there is an aisle where there will be salsa. Lots and lots and lots of salsa. A bounty of options. And many of these options are only possible because of the existence of a mild jalapeno. But the rub is that this same jalapeno is in another part of the grocery store, the produce aisle, keeping us from having options in our cooking. Brian Reinhart, Again, I think the issue.

Brian Reinhart (26:46)

Is not so much that the tam pepper exists. I think that the failing. The failing came at the marketplace when they took over, and we didn't really understand what was happening. We didn't understand that a certain amount of choice was going away or that even that there is another kind of jalapeno available at this point. That was certainly not their intention. They didn't mean to dominate the market in that way. They didn't intend for us all to forget that another kind of pepper existed.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (27:16)

For me, I mean, I'm lucky. I can always just go out to our own fields and harvest jalapenos if I wish to get the heat level I want.

Willa Paskin (27:24)

Dr. Stephanie Walker, the pepper expert, again.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (27:26)

But, yeah, if you're just at the mercy of grocery stores or even farmer's markets, it's going to be harder to get exactly what you may want.

Willa Paskin (27:34)

If you go to a grocery store and you, like, are in the aisle, can you just eyeball them and be.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (27:40)

Like, no, no, no, no, you can't.

Willa Paskin (27:43)

There's no hope for the rest of us either, though.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (27:45)

You can't.

Willa Paskin (27:46)

Stephanie hopes we're on the cusp of an heirloom pepper movement like what's happened with tomatoes. The grocery store just used to sell generic red softballs, but now you can get colorful, wrinkly, tasty heirloom tomatoes in every shape and size in markets and restaurants and even plant them in your own garden.

Dr. Stephanie Walker (28:03)

If you want a good hot jalapeno, buy some of these heirloom varieties. You know, plant your own. If you are a chef and want a predictable heat, a predictable flavor in your peppers, for goodness sakes, don't just say, I want, you know, mild peppers. I want hot peppers. You know, get to know these varieties because these are, as with wine grapes, as with heirloom apples, you know, they're very unique. And we need to celebrate this amazing germplasm and hope that we keep it available.

Willa Paskin (28:31)

In the meantime, you can just do what Dr. Ben Viallon, aka Dr. Pepper, the one who created the first mild jalapeno does and make a different choice at the market.

Dr. Benigno Viallon (28:40)

I know I go for the Serrano at the supermarket because they're hot.

Willa Paskin (28:46)

And if the day ever comes when your Serrano peppers start to taste different. Well, maybe it's not just you. This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us@decoder ringslate.com this episode was produced by Evan Chung. We produced Decoder Ring with Katie Shepard and Max Friedman. Derek John is Executive producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. I also really encourage you to go read Brian Reinhart's piece for D Magazine, all about his Jalapeno hunt, which we'll link to on our show page. If you haven't yet, please subscribe and rate our feed and Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends if you're a fan of the show. I'd also love for you to sign up for Slate Plus. Slate plus members get to listen to Decoder Ring and every other Slate podcast without any ads. You also get unlimited access to Slate's website. Member support is crucial to our work, so please go to slate.com decoder plus to join Slate plus today. We'll see you in two weeks.