Back Story
After a couple of years of gardening, my husband and I finally realized our top 3 gardening priorities (tomatoes, winter squash, and peppers) and realized we needed to be more strategic about our peppers in particular. It can be tricky to find a pepper that is happy in our cooler climate and shorter season. We also realized, we like hotter peppers. In fact, it’s been a bit of a thing the last couple years to figure out how far we can go up the hotness scale in our culinary exploits (most of which involve homegrown peppers). I do think we hit our limit when we incorporated a few too many of these Bulgarian Carrot Peppers into a batch of chili.
Anyhow, I came across Bulgarian Carrot Peppers in a book called “Fiery Ferments” my preferred source for hot sauce and salsa recipes. The authors compared Bulgarian Carrot Peppers to Habaneros and specifically recommended them for a particular recipe. Of course, we had to try them out.
One obscure source says these peppers are rumored to have been snuggled out of Russia in the 1980s whether that is fact or fiction, I do not know. If true, it makes these fantastic little peppers even more fascinating. If not, it’s not going to keep me from growing them every year.
Our Experience Growing Bulgarian Carrot Pepper
I grew them in the greenhouse the first year we tried them and they kept cranking out bright green carrot shaped peppers that turned a glowing orange when ripe. We cautiously subbed them out for Jalapenos here and there (for some reason our success with Jalapenos is always abismal) and were pleased with the results.
It wasn’t until the following year (last summer 2024) that we really saw these peppers in their element however. After doing well with these peppers in the greenhouse, we were pretty confident they would do well in the garden. Sure enough, the plants were loaded throughout the summer with bright green pointed peppers similar in color, but a bit longer than jalapenos.
Having been a little distracted at the start of the growing season by the addition of a small farm hand, I had forgotten what varieties of peppers had failed in the seedling stage and which ones had actually made it into the garden. On several occasions, I grabbed handfuls of green peppers off a prolific plant in the garden and added them to salsas and other recipes. I could not for the life of me remember which pepper plant was which or what that pepper plant could possibly be. Upon eating several batches of much hotter than anticipated salsa, I began to develop a suspicion about the highly prolific lone pepper plant situated between a few less than prolific Jalapenos plants and a Jimmy Nardello Sweet pepper.
I decided to wait a little longer to harvest more peppers off of the suspicious plant and see if the peppers would develop the tale-tel glowing orange color unmistakable to Bulgarian Carrot Peppers. Sure enough, they did. For some reason, though, that didn’t make me any more cautious in my use of them. I canned several batches of salsa with a few extra Bulgarian Carrot Peppers for good measure and the results were quite good, if a little on the excessively hot side.
Needless to say, these are a very prolific little pepper well suited to our growing season. They are HOT, but well worth growing if you can handle a bit of heat. And for a canned salsa that is actually spicy (somehow Jalapenos never quite do it), these are just the ticket.
