I like the heat of Habs and others, but the New Mexico green chiles are always my favorite. And, for mass consumption, they are mild, tasty (especially when roasted) easy to grow and prolific. Anaheim, Poblano, Ancho, Big Jim, Joe Parker, R. Naky, these are my favorites.

You can buy these seeds in a lot of places. And, you can get live plants of this type at nearly every plant store in the spring. Personally, I have never had a bad experience with Territorial Seed and The Chile Pepper Institute. Check out the link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Chile Pepper Inhstitute

I love my naga jolakia's pc-1. I only have one plants but have gotten hundreds of pods from it in the last year and a half. It tastes lake a cross between a red hab and a cayenne too me. Super easy to grow.

I also love the aji lemon from NMSU. Nice heat and a nice citrus taste. Also very prolific. Had pods in sixty days from start!

I use mostly dried crushed chillies. My favorite is Thai Dragon heirloom chilies. they have orange/red color when dried, excellent flavour in curries and spice level is quite nice too depending on your taste buds.

I have planted Italian (thin long ones), Thai Dragon, Thai (small), Serano, and Cayanne. I love them all

My favorite is the Bhut Jolokia aka Ghost chili. Habs and Thai are also good.

I guess mine is the Hot Hungarian Wax...only one I can eat without severe discomfort. Great sliced, canned and used on sandwiches.
Bruce

I'm partial to the Hungarian Wax, myself...
It was my first pepper, and it still remains one of my favorite mildly hot peppers.
As Bruce said, they can be eaten without discomfort and are incredibly versatile.
Overall, however, I use far more Thai chiles in my cooking...so maybe it's a draw ;-)

I look forward to trying sauces and dishes with the Bhut strains I'm growing.
Then I can make a fair comparison.

Josh

well so far my favorite pepper is a scotch bonnet, Hungarian Wax are delicious! FAtalii's are tasty(hot though) the flavor in the 7pot douglah(my buddy ate one last night and was in servere pain and called off work today! HAHAAHAH i told him it was mistake!) but when you cook with it the flavor is tasty! i ahve yet to try most of the peppers i am growing!

My habs are fun to grow but I give most of them away. For the ones I use the most...Poblano, NuMex, Jalapeno, and Serrano. I am but a chile head in progress (grin)

From my first year growing season (last year) here are my favorites.

Hungarian Wax - Nice size, flavor, versatility.
Jalapeno - Poppers of course.
Serrano - Great for salsa, better heat then Jalapeno.
Cayenne - Good heat and good flavor for cooking.
Carribean Red - Very nice heat level and flavor.
Pepperoncini - Great pickled.

Im growing about 20 more varieties this year that i havent yet harvested alot and formed an opinion on. But im sure this list will grow :)

Jim

I'm growing several new ones this year but of my past ones my favorite ones were Jalape�o, Caribbean Red, Dorset Naga, and Hot Lemon. I use the Jalape�o for many things, Hot Lemon for cooking, and the super hots for making spicy pickles.

John

I dont know about y'all, but Ive never met a chile I didnt like, ive enjoyed every chile I have ever tasted,it all just depends on what u r doing w/ them as to what is best, i use any and all I can get my hands on but I will say those lemon drops u sent me jamie delicious :)

Thanks for all the posts... so far I think I too have yet to meet a chile I didn't like. I grow about 60 varieties. I think my favorites are Biker Billy, Hot Portugal, Ancho, Thai Hot Orange, and Beaver Dam. Beaver Dam is great, although not much heat.

Interesting, behlgarden you mentioned that you liked Thai Dragon. Last year I gave a friend a Thai Dragon plant, it was a hybrid. The taste was wonderful. This year I went out of my way to find the heirloom variety (still puzzles me how you can have a hybrid and heirloom of the same name) we both tasted the fruit. It wasn't very hot and the flavor was just nasty... I can't describe it, but we both made nasty faces over the taste. I really don't understand it.

I also cast my vote for the hot hungarian wax. But, I cannot discount jalapenos, which I make poppers out of. But, I make my poppers a bit differently, with no batter and no deep fryer. Here's what I do:

Cut peppers in half length wise. Depending who else intends to eat them, you may need to clean out the hot guts.

Fill the halves with cream cheese that has a bit of spices mixed in. I keep it simple and use seasoned salt, garlic powder, and a bit of pepper.

Wrap them in a piece of raw bacon, and stab a toothpick through to hold it together.

Slap them on the grill until the bacon is cooked and the cheese has a nice light brown tinge on top.

Commence eating. I prefer to dip mine in Tapatio hot sauce, but any would work.

They are very addicting, and also be carfeul with the hot cheese at first. I usually sit and eat a couple dozen, or basically until I eat myself sick. The hot wax peppers I either just eat outright, or slice them up and put them in my sandwiches. They are good for dropping into pickles if you make them. Also, hot dilly beans. Ok, I'm hungry now, gotta go.

Joe

datils
cleo's dragon
serrano
andy cayenne

Joe, that recipe sounds delicious! Here is one I have made and enjoy. Anything on the grill tastes better tho.

Roasted Jalapeno Poppers

Ingredients

� 12 large jalapeno peppers
� 2 ounces feta cheese
� 4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
� 4 ounces shredded smoked pepper Jack cheese, or other hot pepper cheese, or extra-sharp Cheddar
� A small handful fresh cilantro, finely chopped
� 2 tablespoons finely chopped chives, or, grated onion
� Two or three slices of bacon, fried crispy and finely chopped

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Cut 1/3 of each pepper off lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Place on a baking sheet. If peppers do not sit flat on the baking sheet, slice a thin piece off the bottom of the pepper so it will not roll around.

Mash the feta, cream cheese, shredded cheese, cilantro, chopped bacon and chives together and stuff the peppers with the mixture. Roast for 15 to 18 minutes, or until the peppers are tender and the cheese is brown at the edges and bubbly.

I don't know why their system typed in the hieroglyphics and the "1/2" in front of my listings for the recipe. Hard to ignore them, but, they simply replaced the "dot" in front of each ingredient in my Word document. FYI

That's GardenWeb for you....
a while ago, you could type in the special characters, but they became all garbled
after an "upgrade." GardenWeb makes changes periodically, and usually for the worse.
Then they post a red message at the top of the Forum page about "gremlins" in the system,
and how GardenWeb techs are working hard to fix this or that, but it's really just due to
the poor choices of technology and advertising they've made.

But, hey, it's a free site, right?

Josh

:) As a computer programmer I guess I'll chime in on the 1/2 mystery. Those are Unicode characters, that Gardenweb is having problems reproducing. The word Jalapeno in Spanish has (a diacritical tilde)~ character over the n. It appears that the software used to host this forum is very very old. :(

Anyway here's my tiny list as I have lots more peppers to tase :):
Bell Pepper - Don't like
Manzano - Don't like
Jalapeno - Will tolerate
Anaheim - Will tolerate
Orange Habanero - Just OK, nothing special
Serrano - Just OK, nothing special (best green)
Pepperonchini - Love them
Tabasco - Love them

I'm not a big fan of Annuums as you can see. Lots of flavor, but not the kind that I like. I would love to taste some baccatums and pubescens to determine if I'd like to grow them.

Rudy