Poblano vs Jalapeño

Two Capsicum annuum from Mexico that nobody confuses on the shelf and everybody confuses in the heat conversation. The Poblano is the large, heart-shaped pod from Puebla. The Jalapeño is the short, thick, cylindrical pod named for Xalapa in Veracruz. Oregon State University Extension gives the Poblano as 3 to 4 inches wide by 4 to 7 inches long and the Jalapeño as 1.5 inches by 3 inches. That size difference decides almost everything about how each is used.

The Poblano is the stuffing pepper. Thick walls and a wide cavity make it the classic choice for chiles rellenos, and roasting loosens its tough skin, which is why it is nearly always roasted before anything else happens to it. Its heat is low and unreliable, and one plant can give a pod with real warmth next to a pod with almost none. Dried, it changes name. The ripe red pod dried becomes the ancho, and a darker dried form is the mulato. Paul Bosland at New Mexico State sums up the dried flavors in single words: ancho is sweetish, mulato is chocolaty.

The Jalapeño is the everything pepper. Green and raw it is grassy and crisp. Pickled and sliced it sits on every nacho plate in the United States. Smoked and dried it becomes chipotle, which Bosland calls smoky in the same list. Texas named it the official state pepper in 1995 by House Concurrent Resolution 105. Its heat runs a real range across cultivars. Texas A&M released 'TAM Mild Jalapeño-1' in 1983 for processors who wanted the flavor without the burn, and the same program's HPLC test of the hot cultivar 'Grande' came out at 19,980 SHU.

Puebla has one more claim on this page. Kraft and colleagues, writing in PNAS in 2014, place the oldest unambiguous chili pepper remains in preceramic layers of dry caves in the Tehuacán Valley of Puebla, and they name central-east Mexico as the most likely region where Capsicum annuum was first cultivated. The Poblano is a modern pepper, not that ancient one. But it grows in the state where the whole story started.

Sources

• Oregon State University Extension: Grow Your Own Peppers (EC 1227)
• Bosland 1996, Purdue NewCROP: Capsicums: Innovative Uses of an Ancient Crop
• Texas State Library and Archives Commission: Texas State Symbols
• Crosby et al. 2010, HortScience 45(11): 'TAM Ben Villalon', a New, Multiple-virus Resistant, Mild, Green-chile Pepper (doi:10.21273/HORTSCI.45.11.1756)
• Kraft et al. 2014, PNAS 111(17): Multiple lines of evidence for the origin of domesticated chili pepper, Capsicum annuum, in Mexico (doi:10.1073/pnas.1308933111)