Irascible, hot-stuff Yankee (7)
I believe the answer is:
peppery
'irascible' is the definition.
Both the answer and definition are adjectives. Perhaps you can see an association between them that I can't see?
'hot-stuff yankee' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'yankee' could be 'y' (phonetic alphabet: alpha, bravo, charlie etc.) and 'y' is found in the answer.
The remaining letters 'pepper' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for peppery that I've seen before include "Highly spiced" , "Quick-tempered" , "Very spicy" , "Irritable" .)