Beyond Hot Wiri Wiri Powder

Description

Wiri Wiri peppers are small berry-looking pepper native to Guyana. Some people relate their appearance to cherry tomatoes or to be more precise they look just like red cherries when ripe. They ripen from green to red and it usually takes 90 days from planting to harvest in ideal conditions. 

What is very surprising about these pepper is they are packed with flavor and heat. The Scoville Scale is used to gauge the pungency of peppers. For example, a jalapeno has a Scoville Heat Rating of between 5,000 – 10,000 Scoville Heat Units while a Ghost Pepper has a Scoville Heat Rating of just over 1 million. A Wiri Wiri pepper has a Scoville heat rating between 100,000 – 350,000 SHU. This puts the Wiri Wiri pepper on par as far as the pungency of habanero peppers. 

The flavor is very distinct for peppers, it has a very earthy flavor and tastes very similar to tomatoes. In Guyana, they are commonly used in stews, BBQ sauces, hot sauces, soups, & Guyanese Pepperpot. Hot sauces using Wiri Wiri peppers are commonly found throughout the Caribbean and Brazil.