The Ultimate Insanely Super Hot Chili Pepper Cookbook

If you like chili peppers, The Ultimate Insanely Super Hot Chili Pepper Cookbook is the book for you – as if you couldn’t tell from the name alone. The book is absolutely dedicated to chili peppers of all kinds, and it serves as a great introduction to cooking with chili peppers if you haven’t used whole peppers much before in your own kitchen. The book starts off with an introduction to working with peppers and descriptions of about 30 chili peppers from around the world, from the mild pasilla chili to the super-hot (hottest chili in the world, actually) bhut jolokia, or ghost chili. Once you have a feel for what you’ll be dealing with, you can head into the recipes.

The book is divided into seven chapters: appetizers and soups; salsas, marinades and pastes; fish and seafood; meat and poultry; vegetables; pasta and rice; drinks and sweets. There really is something for everyone in this very diverse group of recipes – especially considering that the dessert recipes in the last chapter also include chili peppers! The recipes are straighforward and easy to follow along with, and every one includes a beautiful photo of how the finished dish should turn out. For those who like chilis but are a bit sensitive to heat, it is also worth noting that every recipe has a note indicating how mild or spicy the finished product will be.

This is a really fun book to have in the kitchen because all the dishes are made from scratch and you can really get some experience trying new techniques that you might not get in other cookbooks. This is because many books not only rely on the same types of chilis in their recipes (most are common in this book, but a few might require careful shopping to find), but also rely on powdered or dried chilis instead of fresh. Working with fresh chilis gives you a whole new dimension of flavor and kicks things up in the kitchen just enough – especially when you go for the spicier recipes!