• If you have a question about commercial production or the hot sauce business, please post in Sauce Biz.

shopping Where do you source fresh peppers out of season?

Aside from the basic banana, poblano, bird, jalapeno, habanero, and sometimes serrano that are available on the grocery store shelves year round is there anywhere that sells more interesting fresh peppers year round?

I'm finding mainly sellers of seeds and dried peppers but it seems hard to find fresh ones available via online order. I'm assuming there have to be operations running out of greenhouses so that they don't have to limit themselves to typical pepper growing timelines. Do you have recommendations for reputable places to order from? Thanks!
 
Some good sources.
Thank you. I checked through those links, unfortunately several are apparently out of business now (websites lead to 404 errors), and the others either only sell dried products and seeds and/or only sell the fresh peppers during season. The one out of Germany appears to sell fresh peppers now, I'd just need something like that in the USA (or Canada or Mexico as long as they'll ship to the USA).
 
Sourcing may be difficult but do you have the means to grow your own indoors?
I may try growing my own this year. I did buy some Datil pepper seeds. I can probably grow outdoors, I was just hoping there was a convenient option to buy some ready-to-go peppers anytime to try out some sauce recipe ideas I have.

I'm not really even looking for something super crazy, some ripe red ghosts and red serranos would do the trick for now, though I'd also love to find some aji amarillo but I can guess those would be harder to find.
 
I may try growing my own this year. I did buy some Datil pepper seeds. I can probably grow outdoors, I was just hoping there was a convenient option to buy some ready-to-go peppers anytime to try out some sauce recipe ideas I have.

I'm not really even looking for something super crazy, some ripe red ghosts and red serranos would do the trick for now, though I'd also love to find some aji amarillo but I can guess those would be harder to find.
Next best thing to fresh if you’re looking to make sauce is to look for pepper mash purée.
 
 
Plan ahead and contact growers if you want specific chiles. Now is the time to make contact. For southern growers, there may be some year round fresh chiles, but probably not some of the interesting varieties you are looking for as they probably won't have guarantees buyers.

The mashes and purees are good options for year round supply. If you KNOW what you need and can contract with a grower for delivery in the fall, then you can set aside days for processing and preserving the fresh peppers. Freeze, dry, can, puree and can....

I have accepted delivery of up to 300 pounds of fresh scorpion peppers in the fall. It's a heck of a commitment to make sure you have the availability and capacity to process the fresh peppers. Some of those peppers were dried, most were cut/trimmed and frozen.

Good Luck!


PS- in most sauces, dried or frozen peppers work Just FINE instead of fresh peppers. Firehouse Flavors has a lot of the most common chiles as powders, whole and flakes.
 
Aside from the basic banana, poblano, bird, jalapeno, habanero, and sometimes serrano that are available on the grocery store shelves year round is there anywhere that sells more interesting fresh peppers year round?

I'm finding mainly sellers of seeds and dried peppers but it seems hard to find fresh ones available via online order. I'm assuming there have to be operations running out of greenhouses so that they don't have to limit themselves to typical pepper growing timelines. Do you have recommendations for reputable places to order from? Thanks!
I have found interesting varieties at some of those fancy "organic" type grocery stores. Asian markets will have some different stuff too.
 
Interesting, and a great price for that much. For the sauce I'm looking at making using that pepper it wouldn't be fermented so I could certainly play around with the recipe using that, thanks a bunch!

The one I'm looking to develop using the ghosts (and serranos but also looking to try to get some fresh Korean Hong-Gochu peppers to test the recipe with each) will be fermented so I'd need to source fresh peppers with that, as I don't think mashes can be fermented further than they already are, they all seem to be acidified before shipping.
Plan ahead and contact growers if you want specific chiles. Now is the time to make contact. For southern growers, there may be some year round fresh chiles, but probably not some of the interesting varieties you are looking for as they probably won't have guarantees buyers.

The mashes and purees are good options for year round supply. If you KNOW what you need and can contract with a grower for delivery in the fall, then you can set aside days for processing and preserving the fresh peppers. Freeze, dry, can, puree and can....

I have accepted delivery of up to 300 pounds of fresh scorpion peppers in the fall. It's a heck of a commitment to make sure you have the availability and capacity to process the fresh peppers. Some of those peppers were dried, most were cut/trimmed and frozen.

Good Luck!


PS- in most sauces, dried or frozen peppers work Just FINE instead of fresh peppers. Firehouse Flavors has a lot of the most common chiles as powders, whole and flakes.
Thank you! If I could find fresh frozen ones that could work, I'm assuming they'd still ferment fine? I do want to avoid dried or powdered peppers because the flavor is so different with those even after rehydration.
I don't think he is commerical just hobby so I don't think a contract grow would be applicable.
I do have plans on eventually launching some sauces of my own but I'm very much still in the recipe development stage. I don't need big quantities for that, just enough to try different variations until I nail down the flavor profiles I'm looking for.
 
Back
Top