Nearly every savoury recipe on this site starts with a scotch bonnet. Orange or red, wrinkled, the size of a walnut and smelling faintly of apricot before the heat arrives. Caribbean grocers sell them by the bag, some supermarkets sell them in fours, and the freezer keeps them for months without any loss.
When there are none, a habanero is the closest thing and behaves the same way in the pot. A red chilli is not the same, but two of them with a pinch of allspice gets you most of the way.
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