Hot, hotter, hottest!
Ask a chef or a home cook in Thailand or Indonesia what his or her favourite pepper is and you are likely to get the same reply everywhere: rawit. Which is no surprise when you consider the preference of these cuisines for spicy dishes. So the EAT ME raw white pepper is perfectly at home. The rawit scores high on the ranking list of the hottest chillies: the international Scoville scale. At EAT ME, we use our own method to indicate how hot peppers are compared to others. On the hot scale, the rawit merits 8 on a scale from 0 -10.
You can recognise this chilli pepper thanks to its small size and elongated shape. It has a waxy looking skin and a shiny red or green colour. The green peppers taste a little milder. And, talking of heat, you should be quite safe if you use fresh rawit pepper. But be very careful if using dried rawit peppers in dishes!
EAT ME rawit pepper is an almost indispensable part of Thai and Indonesian cuisine. And it also adds an extra dimension to many other recipes. Add rawit to butternut squash soup to add some spicy warmth. Or use the pepper in chimichurri.
Baking, stir-frying, cooking or grill on the barbecue, it's all possible. A hot pepper like rawit should be handled with care. Rub your hands with some oil beforehand to which prevent your skin absorbing too much of the pepper's heat. Then finely slice or chop the pepper. Removing the seeds and membranes is also a good idea to temper its spiciness. After preparation, wash your hands thoroughly with soap and do not rub your eyes!
Rawit pepper will keep well longer if stored in the fridge.
The growers who produce rawit peppers for EAT ME can be found in Morocco, South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique and Senegal. The crops are grown in open fields. The pepper starts life as a small seed. After 2 weeks it is big enough to be potted up. Once it is 40 cm high, the plants move to their final destination.
Growers start harvesting the peppers after 3 months. At this stage, the peppers have reached a minimum length of 3 cm. The red peppers are also harvested as orange red. The best indication that a rawit pepper is ready to be picked is a shiny skin.
