Jalapeño Infused Oil — Heat With a Personality | Wilson’s Foods

If you’ve ever bitten into a jalapeño popper at a street food market and thought “why don’t I cook with this more often?” — this oil is the answer to that question. Wilson’s Foods Jalapeño Infused Oil brings that fresh, grassy heat into your everyday cooking without any of the chopping, seeding, or accidental eye-rubbing that comes with working with fresh jalapeños. You’re welcome.

South Africa has always had a thing for heat — peri-peri is basically a birthright here. And over the last few years, Mexican flavours have quietly made themselves at home in our kitchens through the street food scene, taco nights, and the kind of cooking that just becomes part of your weekly rotation before you’ve really noticed. Jalapeño sits right at the intersection of both worlds. It’s familiar, it’s exciting, and it belongs in a good oil.

Here’s the Thing About Jalapeño

Jalapeño isn’t just heat. That’s the bit most people miss. There’s a grassy, slightly sweet freshness underneath the warmth that makes it completely different from other chillies — and it’s that freshness that we worked hard to capture in this oil. Get it wrong and you end up with something that tastes like generic chilli oil. Get it right and it tastes unmistakably, properly jalapeño.

The heat itself is measured — it builds gradually rather than hitting you immediately, and it sits at a comfortable warmth rather than clearing the room. It’s the kind of heat that makes food more interesting, not less edible. People who are nervous about spice try this and are surprised. People who love heat use more of it. It works for everyone, which is exactly what a good pantry oil should do.

The base is our canola-olive oil blend, which handles high heat without any fuss — so you can cook with this oil rather than just drizzling it over things at the end. Both approaches work. Both are worth trying.

What We Made First

Every oil in the rainbow range has a dish that told us we’d finally got it right. For this one, it was jalapeño garlic bread. Thick slices of sourdough, the oil brushed on generously with a little crushed garlic, into a hot oven or onto the braai grid until the edges are golden and the inside is soft and fragrant with that jalapeño warmth running right through it.

It sounds simple. It is simple. But that’s exactly why it works as a test — there’s nowhere to hide in a recipe that straightforward. When the garlic bread came out and the jalapeño was right there, warm and fresh and present without any harshness, we knew. That’s the dish we keep coming back to, and it’s where we’d suggest you start too.

Once You’ve Got a Bottle in the Kitchen

You’ll start finding excuses to use it everywhere. That’s just what happens.

Tacos are the obvious next step — heat the oil in the pan before the filling goes in and the jalapeño warmth infuses into everything from the base up. It’s the detail that turns a Tuesday night taco into something worth talking about. Drizzle it over nachos before they go under the grill. Over scrambled eggs on a weekend morning. Into a corn salsa alongside braai chicken — the oil pulls the whole thing together in a way that’s difficult to explain until you’ve tasted it.

It’s brilliant over a chicken and avo pizza — the creaminess of the avo does something very clever to the jalapeño heat and the two of them get along extremely well. Try it over a flatbread with crumbled feta and fresh coriander. Use it to baste chicken wings in the last few minutes on the braai, when the skin is already crisping up and just needs one more thing to push it over the edge. The wings will disappear before anything else on the grid. You’ve been warned.

And for the bakers — jalapeño cornbread made with this oil has a warmth that spreads from the inside out. Make it alongside a bowl of soup on a cold evening and tell us it’s not one of the better decisions you’ve made this winter.

A Few Tips Before You Start

It’s a cooking oil and a finishing oil — use it to cook with in a hot pan and use it to drizzle over things at the end. Both work. Don’t feel like you have to choose.

Start with a little less than you think — especially if you’re new to jalapeño. The heat builds as you eat so give it a moment before you decide you want more. You can always add, you can’t subtract.

Keep it on the counter — this is not a back-of-the-cupboard oil. The more you see it, the more you’ll use it. And the more you use it, the more you’ll wonder what you were cooking with before.

Start here: Jalapeño Garlic Bread — serves 4, ready in 10 minutes. The recipe that told us we’d got the oil right.

Jalapeño Garlic Bread

The recipe that told us the Jalapeño Infused Oil was finally right. Golden, fragrant, with that warm jalapeño heat running right through it. Ten minutes and you'll never look at plain garlic bread the same way again.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 5 minutes mins

Cook Time 10 minutes mins

Total Time 15 minutes mins

Servings: 4

Course: Side Dish, Starter

Cuisine: South African

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

  

• 1 large sourdough loaf halved lengthways
• 80 ml Wilson's Foods Jalapeño Infused Oil
• 3 cloves garlic crushed
• 30 g butter softened
• 5 ml dried parsley
• sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper

Method

 

1. Preheat your oven to 200°C or heat your braai grid to medium-high.
2. Mix the Wilson's Foods Jalapeño Infused Oil, crushed garlic, softened butter and dried parsley together until well combined. Season with salt and pepper and taste — the jalapeño warmth should be present and comfortable. Add a little more oil if you want more heat.
3. Spread the mixture generously over both cut sides of the sourdough — don't be shy here, you want the oil working all the way into the bread.
4. Wrap loosely in foil and place in the oven or on the braai grid for 7 minutes until warmed through and the butter has melted completely into the bread.
5. Open the foil and return to the oven or grid for a further 3 minutes until the edges are golden and just starting to crisp. Keep an eye on it — the difference between golden and burnt is about 45 seconds.
6. Tear and serve immediately. This does not improve with sitting.

Notes

Sourdough is the right bread for this — the slight tang in the crust works beautifully alongside the jalapeño warmth. A good ciabatta is the next best option. The butter and oil combination gives you richness from the butter and heat tolerance from the oil — both matter. If you're making this on the braai, get it on the grid while the meat is resting. The timing works out perfectly and the bread comes off exactly when you need it.

Part of the Rainbow Range

The Jalapeño Infused Oil completes the Wilson’s Foods infused range alongside Garlic & Chilli Infused Oil and Mustard Infused Oil. Three oils built around a simple idea — that the ingredient should be visible in the bottle, the flavour should be real, and South African kitchens deserve oils that keep up with the food we actually cook. We’re proud of all three. But we might be slightly partial to this one.

The best pantry staples are the ones you reach for without thinking. The ones that live on the counter, not at the back of the cupboard behind the tahini you bought in 2021. We made this oil to earn that spot. From what we’ve seen so far, it’s settling in nicely.

What would you make first? Drop it in the comments — we’re curious, and we’re always looking for an excuse to open another bottle.