Pepper School

Ask most Americans to name a Peruvian sauce and you'll hear "the green one" — ají verde, the huacatay-and-jalapeño blend served at every rotisserie chicken counter from Lima to Los Angeles. Ask them about huancaína, the creamy ají amarillo-and-cheese sauce...

If you’ve eaten at a Peruvian restaurant, you’ve met ájí verde. It’s the bright green sauce that shows up next to your pollo a la brasa, gets spooned onto sandwiches, and disappears from the table basket faster than the bread...

Every bottle of hot sauce makes an implicit promise about where it came from. Most shoppers never think to check whether that promise is true. But if you have ever tasted a "Peruvian-style" sauce that fell flat next to the...

Pick up almost any hot sauce or condiment bottle in a U.S. grocery aisle and flip it over. Odds are you'll find a vinegar-and-water base thickened with gums, colored with something synthetic, and preserved with an ingredient you can't pronounce...

If you've noticed more ceviche on menus, more ají-anything on food blogs, or a rotisserie chicken chain in your neighborhood with a green sauce everyone's suddenly obsessed with, you're not imagining it. Peruvian cuisine is having a real moment in...

If you've ever eaten an exceptional Peruvian ceviche and been struck by a flavor that is simultaneously floral, fiery, and unmistakably lime-bright — you were tasting ají limo at work. This small, brilliantly colored pepper is one of Peru's most...