### Rocoto Relleno
Peru — It looks exactly like a harmless stuffed bell pepper, but it's an intensely fiery Andean chili in disguise.
At first glance, this dish looks like a sweet, harmless stuffed red bell pepper. In reality, it’s a thick, juicy Andean chili pepper up to ten times spicier than a jalapeño, stuffed with seasoned meat, crowned with melted cheese, and bathed in a rich, creamy sauce.
How It's Made
To tame the pepper's extreme heat, chefs scrape out the fiery seeds and boil the chilies up to three times in a mix of water, salt, vinegar, and sugar to extract the capsaicin. The hollowed peppers are then packed with a savory-sweet filling of chopped beef, pork, raisins, toasted peanuts, and boiled eggs. Finally, they are topped with cheese, drenched in a milk-and-egg wash, and baked until bubbling.
The Story
The rocoto pepper has been cultivated by the Incas high up in the Andes Mountains for thousands of years. The modern stuffed dish, however, is a brilliant example of culinary fusion from the Peruvian city of Arequipa. Indigenous cooks combined their ancient, fiery pepper with new ingredients brought by Spanish colonizers—like dairy, spices, and European meat-stuffing techniques. Today, this beautiful, spicy-sweet meal is the absolute pride of Arequipa's traditional restaurants, known as picanterías.