# Boonie Pepper



## free rider (May 23, 2006)

What exactly is a "boonie pepper"? I believe the name is a slang term used on Guam. Anyone know the normal name?


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## bigwheel (May 26, 2006)

Taking a wild guess it might be a shortened version of Scotch Bonnet. Which is either a type of habanero peppa or close kin to one depending on who speaking on it. 

bigwheel


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## free rider (May 23, 2006)

Thanks, bigwheel. I'm getting a little closer. It seems it is very close to the peri-peri capsicum pepper I encountered as a kid. Mmmm.... love peri-peri.


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## jonk (Dec 21, 2005)

I don't think the boonie pepper is the Scotch Bonnet. You can get boonie pepper plants from Cross Country Nurseries (http://www.chileplants.com), though when I checked today, they were out for the season. Their on-line catalog describes them as follows:

GUAM BOONIES - very hot; Pequin/Piquin Type; 1 to 1.25 inches long by 0.5 to 0.75 inches wide; thin flesh; matures from medium green to orange to red; upright pods; green leaves; 36 to 42 inches tall; Very Late Season; Uses: Drying; from Guam; _C.chinense_.

(Just to confuse matters, Dave's Garden (www.davesgarden.com) says they're C. frutescens, which would make them a Tabasco pepper--I don't think so)

For a picture, see http://www.mpwarner.com/in-depth/image-295.html

One writer refers to them as a cross between a jalapeno and kung pao, but I think that's figurative, not botanical. In any case, they are extremely hot and definitely require gloves whilst cutting. I don't know what their Scofield/Scoville number is.

If you want recipes on how to use 'em, just pop "boonie pepper" into Google and you'll get everything from chicken to cream sauce.


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## free rider (May 23, 2006)

I want to get some for a friend who used to live on Guam and misses them. The piquins have a heat rating of some 140,000


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## bigwheel (May 26, 2006)

Well sorry I missed my guess on it being in the hab genre..sob. So sorry. Now that we found out whut it is for sure...I got input. Them chili pequins grow wild over all S. Texas to way N. of Austin..and they like to grow along the river. Depending on the geography whut folks calls em ranges from pee peppas to river peppas..blah blah blah. Now ours are plumb round just like a pee. Roughnecks was fond of stipping off a limb full of fruit and leaves and holding it in their fist whilst blowing out the leaves and leaving the fruit. Then they toss em in the mouf chew em up and swallow em. Was some kind of testosterone tournament from whut I could gather from my daddy. Anyway like the man say them things is hotter than heck. Ranks about half way on the heat scale twixt a jap and and hab (course I aint seen a hot jap in the past 20 yrs or so. They is now custom designed mild for the yups ya know?) Anyway if that Guam version is like the ones we got..they got plenty of heat but zero flavor. Hope yalls dont work like that. 

bigwheel


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## free rider (May 23, 2006)

Oh I hope what you meant was "pea" pepper and not "pee" pepper.  

I think my friend is looking for heat. His brother was a roughneck. Good old Texas roughneck. I'm not sure everbody knows what a roughneck is. I didn't until I met his brother.

A couple of years ago, I bought some jalapeños that tasted like bells.


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## cliveb (Mar 16, 2005)

"(Just to confuse matters, Dave's Garden says they're C. frutescens, which would make them a Tabasco pepper--I don't think so)"

Capsicum Frutescens is a species of hot pepper; Tabasco is a member of that species, as is the Malegueta Pepper from Brazil and the Angkor Sunrise from Cambodia. The frutescens species are often known as bird peppers. The boonie /booney pepper from Guam is also from the same species - the pods grow upwards and fall off easily, making them ideal bird food! 

No, I'm not a chili expert; I'm currently preparing a Cooking Course on hot peppers!

Scotch Bonnets are Capsicum Chinense, the same as the Habaneros.


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## frankfejeran24 (Jun 7, 2007)

im pretty sure you can find them under Dane Sale....my micro green farmer is growing them for my personal use now


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## svennn (Nov 30, 2010)

Boonie peppers are a small ( upto a little over 1 inch in length) slender pepper that grows throughout most of south east asia, they are a veriaty of Thai pepper, they go from light green to yellowish orange to red, they are very hot! and the the heat does not deminish with cooking. The plants are fast growing and hardy. I have several in my yard (all relatives of a house warming gift given 7 years ago) I routinely harvest peppers from June right up into December (we live in SE GA). I have several differant types of hot peppers growing and while not the hottest, the Boonie is still one of my favorites due to it's sustained lasting burn! Hope it helps.


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## chamorrito (Feb 20, 2011)

svennn had it mostly right! The Boonie Pepper is a relative of the Thai Bird Chile and Malagueta/Malaga Bird Pepper. While they are similar in looks, they are distinctly different peppers in heat and taste. These peppers are like coffee beans. While most look the same, their taste differs dependent upon the climate, soil and growing conditions. The Thai chili tends to be more on the "sweeter" side, meaning less heat and has a more subtle flavor than the Guam Boonie. The Malagueta comes close to heat but its effects are not as long lasting.

Growing Boonie Peppers can be quite tricky. The plants like lots of sunlight, growing space, mild to very warm temperatures and humidity. They easily die in the cold. But once the fruit is harvested, it can easily be kept fresh longer by freezing with the stems on. Take them out of the freezer and leave them on the counter until they reach room temperature and they are almost as good as fresh.

The attraction of this pepper is its heat. It can be very intense at first and then evens out and lingers on your tongue and lips which can last for a while (about four to seven times longer than a jalapeno). It can also cause a little numbness. There's definitely a lot of tingling going on. Another attribute of the Boonie is that its heat can be amplified by crushing them (using a mortar and pestle or a small bowl and the back of a spoon). The heat tends to also bring out the sweetness in foods. So what hits your palate first is the heat, then sweet followed by the other flavors of the dish giving a greater depth to your flavor profiles when used correctly. Guamanians do not usually dry these peppers, we prefer them fresh. If not fresh, then frozen and maybe as a last resort, in a paste. Finding seeds and plants online is easier these days. Just Google Guam boonie pepper plant for sale.

Here's a current link for live plants: http://www.chileplants.com/search.a...ID=&NewProduct=&Letter=G&SearchButton=Pressed

This site has a lot of different pepper plants at very good prices. The only downfall is that you have to order at least 12.


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## kokopuffs (Aug 4, 2000)

When I was 7-9 years old I lived on Guam and picked a tiny red pepper and ate it whole.  Neither resembling a habanero, nor cubanelle nor scotch bonnet, the pepper tapered to a point and measured approx 1 inch in length.

Yet it had BIG fire, sending me and a friend who tried one scurrying back home screaming in utter tears.  Such was my first ever experience with a hot pepper and it could have been a boonie pepper but I'm not sure of this.

BTW the words 'boonie' and 'yo-yo' originate in the Philipino language.


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## boscoe01 (Sep 13, 2011)

Chamoritto/Chamorro (Hafa Adai) elegantly describes the heat and flavor sooooooo well. I couldn't have described it so well. I also agree who wants dried Boonies _IF_ you can get them

fresh. I'm happy sharing with my friends the dried ones I have. What a flavor!


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## cacahuate (Feb 29, 2012)

Oh, the memories! When I was in 2nd grade, (1972) My Dad was in the Air Force and we were stationed on Guam. All of us kids had the urban rumors about the boonie peppers, but I only tried a tiny bit ONCE. Ouch.

My best non-culinary memory of them was when a kid at daycare was running around loose with one, trying to jam it into the other kids' mouths. So, there were a couple of crying kids, and a lot of kids screaming and running aimlessly in panic. The teachers were trying to direct all these wild kids, and one of the grownups was yelling "He's got a boonie pepper! He's got a boonie pepper!".

You'd think the kid was a terrorist or something. At least, in those days, that was enough excitement for one day 

-Russell


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## rickmystic (Mar 5, 2012)

Boonie peppers (Donie Sali) can be purchased online at ebay by doing a search. Most are just for the seeds. For those that want to use for making kelaguen or finadene right away, you can purchase high quality washed and dried boonie peppers from "Aiko's Red Hot" sold on ebay in a 2 oz. vacuum pack. These peppers can also be opened for the seed to be planted. The feedback from these sellers is excellent and 100% positive. Shipping is very fast. Peppers are hot, hot, hot so don't let your kids play with them.


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## tony franks (Jun 27, 2013)

That is the name I was stationed in Guam and I still cook with them, it means wild pepper, it is small and thin grows on small bushes, just like other peppers the longer on the vine the more heat.  Green mild yellow hot, red fire.


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## mikelm (Dec 23, 2000)

Nice you brought this interesting thread back to life. It's only seven years old! But then, peppers _do_ go on forever.

I have two questions-

Any of you know if West Africa's* Billy Goat Pepper* is an antecedent of the Scotch Bonnet? I seem to remember reading somewhere that it was brought to the Western Hemisphere by slaves, but have no idea where I read it. I had a very slight contact with the Billy Goat years ago when I lived in Liberia for a year. (That part of West Africa was known as the Slave Coast.) They made a Billy Goat Pepper Soup which my mother absolutely loved. She would sit at the table guzzling it, sweating like a horse, with tears running down her cheeks. And loving every sip. I thought even at the time that this was kind of unusual for a girl from Missouri who was scared to death of garlic.

I was too young to handle anything like that, though I've come to like spicy (but not _that_ spicy.)

The other- anybody have any idea why* BigWheel* dropped out of CT? I still miss him.

Mike


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## erben (Sep 27, 2013)

Well said, I also live in south eat GA and have several boonie pepper plants that come back each year. We have frost a time or two each winter and the plants look dead but when spring come so do that, and in addition to the heat ( which is about as hot as I can stand) the fact that they grow up-right makes them easy to harvest.


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## emptynest1002 (Oct 15, 2013)

The Boonie Pepper is the Pequin Pepper. It is about 13–40 times hotter than jalapeños on the Scoville scale (100,000–140,000 units). When I lived on Guam, we'd go out into he boonies (jungle) and pick them. Sometimes we'd get lucky and find a few bushes on the beach at the edge of the boonies that someone hadn't already picked clean. We would crush them into beer and marinate chicken or beer then cook on the hibachi or barbecue.

If you want to grow your own Boonie Peppers, they will do best in dappled sunlight or light shade. Start the seeds indoors in late winter and plant the seedlings outdoors when temperatures warm up to 60 degrees Fahrenheit or above. This pepper I pretty drought and should not be over watered. While it can survive some drying out, the pequin pepper cannot tolerate standing water or dense, heavy wet soil. Plant pequin peppers in loamy or sandy soil with good drainage. Watch the leaves in dry weather, when they show the first signs of wilting, soak the area around the roots thoroughly.


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## threesheets (Feb 14, 2014)

Boonie Pepper is a wild pepper that is only found on Guam.  It is hotter than a Scotch Bonnet habanero. It is used in cooking and then it's used VERY lightly. If you ever find any, be careful.


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## padkeejoe (Jun 5, 2013)

bigwheel said:


> (course I aint seen a hot jap in the past 20 yrs or so. They is now custom designed mild for the yups ya know?)
> 
> bigwheel


That's an interesting observation.

I thought that might simply be an Aussie phenomenon, as the Jalapenos we get (when they're available) tend to be a bit larger and generally lack the heat profile that I recall from our years in the US and forays into Mexico.

Every now and again though, an "heirloom" batch turns up, so you have to be careful and taste one before copiously adding them into dishes, lest they blast the beaks off the dinner guests.


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## teamfat (Nov 5, 2007)

The jalapenos I grow, sourced from a local community garden, are NOT the wimpy, toned down type. I'm toying with the idea of doing some variety of ghost pepper this season, or maybe African fatali.

mjb.


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## butzy (Jan 8, 2010)

Maybe have a look at the madame jeanette pepper (surinam yellow), a very hot yellow pepper with an amazing smell.
I am growing them here in my garden and while they are not exactly high yielding, their taste, flavour and smell make up for it


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## teamfat (Nov 5, 2007)

butzy said:


> Maybe have a look at the madame jeanette pepper (surinam yellow), a very hot yellow pepper with an amazing smell.
> I am growing them here in my garden and while they are not exactly high yielding, their taste, flavour and smell make up for it


I remember seeing them in a recipe of yours last year and tucked the name in a corner of my memory. Thanks for the reminder, will be on the lookout for them as I browse the net.

mjb.


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## col b (Oct 5, 2015)

Free Rider said:


> What exactly is a "boonie pepper"? I believe the name is a slang term used on Guam. Anyone know the normal name?


Doone'


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## brian marcos (Mar 7, 2016)

not even close. They are tiny tiny little things looking like mini thai peppers


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## brian marcos (Mar 7, 2016)

Depends on which of the two hot peppers native to Guam you're talking about. The hotter of the two "boonie peppers" is called the Donne Sali or "Guam Super hot pepper", it is small and bright red and grows wild but not usually cultivated. The second "boonie pepper" is called the Donne Ti'au and are long Red and sometimes called Regular Hot peppers. They are commonly grown in back yard gardens. The hotter Donne Sali hits the scovile heat scale between 4000-4250 units.


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## sario (Jun 28, 2016)

The Guam boonie peppers are small peppers that grow wildly in our jungles although no one know what type of peppers they are extremely hot. And yes I know lol I'm from Guam


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## boss gardens (Jul 30, 2016)

I am a Air Force Brat that lived on Guam from 73-75. Went to Dedido Jr. High School and then to Sanchez Jr. Being tricked into eating one while "Boonie Stomping" the person who pulled the trick on you had to of had it done to him. They would tell you that it was "Japanese candy". A sweet treat, but would find yourself breathing FIRE!! I'm talking about at least a good hour deep close to the cliffs at Anderson AF Base. Lol I smile just thinking about this! Fun times for a 12-14 year old. My 1st day of school at Dedido I saw a gang of Gaumanians chasing 2 Philopinos and stabbing them in the Ass as they tried to climb over the fence to get away. I said take me back to Indiana!! What a TIME!


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## chefaholic (Aug 1, 2016)

Besides the boonie peppers on Guam, I remember the fruit bat soup, coconut crabs running around, and the locals insatiable lust for spam. When I bought a new vehicle there, the dealer incentive was a 50 pound bag of ice and 10 cases of spam. I lived there for 3 years and barley made a dent in the 240 cans of spam I got.


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## kokopuffs (Aug 4, 2000)

We spent lots of time having luaus on Agate beach which was truly empty at the time, no hotels at all.

Fwiw to help put out the fire of peppers, I'd recommend eating pineapple.


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## Iceman (Jan 4, 2011)

_LOL. 16 of the 32 posts in this thread are from posters with 3 or less posts. Nine(9) by "1 and out" posters, two(2) posts by a poster that only made 2-posts. This is a somewhat interesting thread. _


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## boss gardens (Jul 30, 2016)

I used to catch the bus at the Officers Club and ride it to the BX-bus hub then get on the Beach Bus to Tarague Beach. Snorkeling for shells, cliff climbing or just watching the pretty girls. I'll never forget those years. Long lines at the gas pumps because of OPEC. The evacuation of Saigon with a lot of the refugee's be placed @ Anderson AFB behind barbwire @ Tin City. This was all b4 I was 15. What a education in worldly events. I'm growing the Carolina Reaper, Thai Dragon Cayenne,Ghost. I'm hoping to cross the Reaper & Thai Pepper. Getting a lot hotter than a "Boonie Pepper" but plentiful in a shorter time.


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## feilongshi (May 22, 2017)

The "bonnie pepper" is the name given to the Tinian pepper on Guam. The Tinian pepper is a doni sali pepper and is extremely hot. I have some homemade Tinian hot pepper paste for occasional use in soups and sauces. Use sparingly, and I mean sparingly.


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## Curjones (Sep 11, 2017)

I was stationed in Guam. I have two bushes growing here in Mississippi.
I don't really use them. I made kelliguine (not spelled right) These are very hot peppers. New to this forum. If you want some seeds contact me. I cant get people to even try them. One friend from India ask if I put one in the food I share with him at times.. lol he doesnt want no more of that...little fire.


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