I tend to cook a lot of Jamaican food, but I live in the USA (Oregon, to be specific), and we do NOT have scotch bonnet available around here. Usually I end up using habanero, which is about the same Scoville rating as scotch bonnet, but lacks that underlying sweetness of scotch bonnet.
Dried anything is never really comparable to fresh anything, but these are pretty exceptional. I re-hydrated a couple of the peppers and made some jerk chicken. It was pretty fantastic. The flavour of the scotch bonnet really came out, and now I'm looking forward to using these peppers in more meals.
I've also used some of the dried peppers (not re-hydrated) in quinoa, and they're still really good.
For what it's worth, I feel the sweetness comes out better when you re-hydrate the peppers (boil some water, then pour the water over peppers in bowl and let them soak for about 10 to 15 minutes).
If you can't get fresh scotch bonnet, this is the next best thing. Now that I know where to get these, I'll probably never use habanero as a substitute again.
Dried scotch bonnet chiles.
