About the Gypsy Pepper
Gypsy peppers are a hybrid pepper developed by Petoseed, a Southern California company specializing in hybridizing peppers and tomatoes. They are a cross between sweet Italian bull horn peppers and bell peppers. These peppers were developed to resist the tobacco mosaic virus, a common plant disease. They are sometimes referred to as cubanelle peppers. They are popular chili peppers for general home garden growing and cooking, prized for their sweetness and prolific plant production. You’ll usually get a lot of peppers from each plant. The super sweet Gypsy pepper creates a rainbow of color in the garden, as the fruits mature from yellow to orange to red, all at different times on the plant.
How Hot is a Gypsy Pepper?
The gypsy pepper measures in at 0 Scoville Heat Units on the Scoville Scale, meaning it has no heat. It is a sweet pepper, on par with the popular bell pepper in its complete lack of heat. It is not a hot pepper by any means. They do make for good frying peppers, and while they are smaller, you can stuff them for smaller appetizer stuffed peppers. My favorite use for them is general cooking down with onions, celery or carrots and garlic as a flavor base, but I also enjoy them raw. I also used them to make homemade sofrito, which itself is a popular flavor base in Latin American cooking. I would definitely grow these again in my garden and plan to do so in the future. Very prolific!
Sweet Bell Peppers Albino Sweet Pepper Italian Sweet Pepper Corno di Toro Cubanelle Pepper Santa Fe Grande
I wouldn’t say any of these peppers is a direct replacement for gypsy peppers, but any of these will do for general cooking, even with some slight flavor differences, particularly in the level of sweetness.
