I'm a rookie for sure; been cooking with supermarket/farmer's market/CSA/mercado chiles for a long time, and I grew some chiles when part of my job was job coaching at a mostly-organic farm where disabled adults worked, but 2017 will be my first season with a garden at home, unless you count my mom's somewhat productive gardens back when I was a kid. (She'd make me pull weeds; i didn't help much beyond that...and eating stuff. She grew bells, but that's the only peppers.) And, as a rookie, I intend to grow one, maybe 2 Supers in 2017. I'm mostly focusing on stuff in the 100,000 to 400,000 SHU range, plus Jalapeños, Serranos, and i want to try some mild/sweet chinense varieties, like Ecuadorian Sweets, NuMex Suaves, shit like that.
The fact is, something at the standard Hab level is probably right around my comfort zone for most dishes that I make, and for the occasional whole&raw pod sampling. But, I want to grow some Supers b/c I wanna push at the boundaries of my comfort zone a little bit, plus I find that Superhots are far more manageable within the context of a meal or within a complex sauce or salsa or whatever. Sure, we've all seen vids of guys just popping whole & raw Supers in our mouths, and most of us have probably tried it ourselves, but that's probably not the "proper" way to enjoy those pods. (No disrespect intended to those who do enjoy eating Supers that way; by all mans, keep it up!) But, trying a Super as an integral component of a recipe you find on THP, or as a means of spicing up one of your old standby dishes? That kinda allows one to enjoy the flavours and character of the pepper without melting one's face clean off.
Whenever I get some pods in a box that are a bit too hott for me to devour straight-up, I usually dice one of'm up and add it to a 2-egg omelet with onions, garlic, and whatever cheese I have on hand. Plenty spicy, but the eggs'n'cheese cut down on the sting a bit. And, it's such a familiar and simple dish, I really get a sense of how the chile in question compares to others I've had...