Kitchen Pepper
Catarina is a small Mexican red chile for cooks who want a compact pepper that dries well, seasons cleanly, and still has enough heat for salsa, vinegar, flakes, and everyday chile powder. The pods are short, glossy, oblong, and easy...
CASA VERDE · HEAT PROFILE
Mild
- Sweet
- Mild — this variety
- Medium
- Hot
- Super hot
Scoville range awaiting confirmation.
Understanding the heat
A diamond marks the midpoint of a listed range, or the listed value when only one number is given. An arrow marks a stated limit. These are variety guides, not measurements of our seed lot. This guide uses unequal numerical bands: sweet 0; mild up to 10,000; medium 10,000–50,000; hot 50,000–800,000; super hot from 800,000 SHU (display capped at 3 million). Heat varies between fruits and with growing conditions.
No numeric marker is shown without a sufficiently clear range. For bundles, the highlighted categories refer to the different varieties.
A Scoville range has not been listed for this variety.
Shop all pepper seeds in Canada
- Packet
- 10+ seeds per packet
- Maturity
- 85 days
- Plant habit
- Productive annuum plants with small oblong red pods
- Season
- 2027
CASA VERDE · GROWER’S NOTES
Get to know your pepper.
MILD PEPPER · 2027 VARIETY · 10+ SEEDS
Catarina Pepper Seeds
Catarina is a small Mexican red chile for cooks who want a compact pepper that dries well, seasons cleanly, and still has enough heat for salsa, vinegar, flakes, and everyday chile powder. The pods are short, glossy, oblong, and easy to use by the handful.
Why Grow It?
Grow Catarina when you want a small red chile with real kitchen value. It is especially useful for drying whole, grinding into powder, making chile vinegar, cooking into salsa, or adding clean heat to beans, soups, braises, tacos, eggs, and pantry sauces.
At A Glance
In The Kitchen
- Drying: Dry ripe pods whole for winter chile powder, flakes, or pantry jars.
- Salsa: Toast dried Catarina lightly before blending with tomato, onion, garlic, and lime.
- Vinegar: Infuse ripe pods for a sharp table vinegar with clean red-chile heat.
- Everyday cooking: Use fresh or dried pods in beans, soups, eggs, tacos, marinades, and braises.
Growing Notes
- Start early: Sow indoors 8-10 weeks before transplanting.
- Keep warm: Germinate in warm soil, ideally 24-29 C.
- Transplant late: Move outside only after nights are reliably warm.
- Harvest stage: Pick fully red for drying, salsa, and the best pantry flavour.
FAQ
How hot is Catarina pepper?
Casa Verde groups Catarina as Mild. The UNECE reference for whole dried chillies places the Catarina commercial type at 3,001–5,000 SHU. That is a reference for dried peppers, not a laboratory result for this seed lot. Actual heat varies; taste a small amount before cooking.
What is Catarina best for?
It is best as a drying and seasoning chile: flakes, powder, salsa, chile vinegar, beans, soups, braises, and pantry sauces.
Can Canadian growers ripen it?
Yes, start indoors early and grow in a warm, sunny, protected site. Containers or raised beds can help improve soil warmth.
Seed note: Small drying chiles can show natural variation in pod size, heat, and ripening speed. Save seed from healthy plants with the red oblong Catarina shape you want to continue.
Cook your harvest
Use your harvest in these recipes. Check the variety notes and substitutions in each recipe.
Start indoors 8–10 weeks before last frost. Germinate at 26–30 °C on a heat mat; peppers stall below 22 °C. Pot up to 10–15 cm before hardening off outside after nights stay above 12 °C.
Feed balanced through bloom, then bump potassium for fruiting. Stake taller varieties. More detail in our full Canadian growing guide.
Match the pepper to the technique: thin-walled varieties blister fast in a hot pan; thick-walled ones roast or stuff beautifully; fruit-forward ones make balanced sauces and pickles. The variety's flavour profile is your shortcut — see Choosing the right pepper for a use-case guide.
