Compared to the north, beef here is local, grass-fed, delicious, and cheap. As a result, we eat more, sometimes as hamburgers. Inevitably, the wife has lamented lack of dill pickles to accompany them. She tried making some. They were close, but not crunchy.
She recently brought home this:
Ajías Catalanes – Catalan chili peppers. They’re hot! They’re great! Who needs dills?
But this raises an interesting question. Uruguayans in general will not touch spicy food. Something with pepper – just a sprinkle of black pepper – is considered picante. Yet they grow hot peppers; you can buy them in the supermarket.
And now we see they pickle them (at the bottom of the label: Industria Uruguaya).
Why?
Besides us, for whom?
It is to sell it to gringos and, maybe to spice sausages (not pickled hot peppers, though). Some people do like these hot peppers, but in general, you are right, people in Uruguay don’t like hot, spicy stuff, just a little bit in their sausages or salami.
I find it hard to imagine that Industria Uruguaya would produce a small-scale product specifically for the consumption of foreigners inside the country, and I doubt they have much of an export market for the same. Still, I have no better explanation.