Sounds more like Stockholm Syndrome to me.
A sensation which is unpleasant at high intensity can be pleasant at low intensity. I like a certain amount of spice in my food (at least, in some of my foods) because I find it interesting. Too much, and the pain outweighs the interestingness. I have my limits, and I know that habaneros and their ilk are above them.
However, as I’ve aged, and as I’ve eaten many foods that are close to but below my limit, my limit has drifted upwards. I eat things now that I would class as “spicy enough to be interesting” that, when I was younger I would have classed as “Ow, too spicy”. Now, my threshold is moving upwards at a slow enough rate that I probably won’t ever enjoy habaneros (at least, not without considerable dilution), but I can see someone else whose threshold advances more quickly than mine. Such people aren’t eating superpeppers for the pain, because for such people, superpeppers aren’t painful.
I like spicy foods. I just don’t see the point in a spice level that is not just a flavor layer, but becomes the food.
An example: a few blocks from here is an Old Chicago location. We go there pretty often, and the food is always good. They have a new menu item, a Spicy Angus Steak sandwich. It sounded pretty good. The “spicy” ingredient is a lot of Anaheim Peppers. (yeah, I know this is way lower on the Scoville than most of you eat) While the sandwich was not too spicy for me, the Anaheim Peppers were the entire sandwich. I thinned them out, not to drop the spice level, but to allow the Angus Steak to participate in the flavor.
As a child, I did not even try peppers (chilies). My parents advised me against them and I just wasn’t interested. My father would not even use black pepper on his food as he said it “burned his mouth”. Likewise, I avoided black pepper. When I went off to college, I was exposed to new ideas and experiences. A local Mexican Restaurant had a half-price beer night and taco bar. I tried black pepper on my eggs. It was great! I was mildly annoyed with my father for keeping me from experiencing such delights for, at the time, was my entire life.
Now, my father loved horseradish, wasabi, and mustard (all of which I can’t stand), as well as green onions and ginger (which I think are fine), so there are definitely differences in what people can tolerate.
Sometime in my late 20’s (I guess), I read a fictional description of a young nomadic woman, migrating through the North American continent; one of the first Homo sapiens to explore the region some 13,000 years ago (this was many years ago when it was believed that was when the first humans arrived). She came upon a chili plant and picked a fruit and bit into it. It burned her mouth, but she was hungry and, in addition to the burning sensation, it was also sweet and crisp, so she swallowed it. As the pain subsided, she felt a rush of endorphins and smiled, gathered all she could find and took them back to the campsite.
I have no idea who wrote that account, but after reading it, my appreciation for chilies has changed. I don’t go for the superhot, but I do grow my own (Jalapenos, Serranos, Tabascos, Cayenne, and Anaheims). Until I started growing my own, I had no idea how much better a fresh Jalapeno tastes as compared to one from the grocery store, let alone the pickled ones you get in a can. You really want some good crushed red pepper on your pizza? Take some fresh Cayennes, slice them open and remove the seeds. Dry them and put them in the blender to chop them up. Oh, man! I can’t wait for this years crop (I have some blooms, but no fruit, yet!).
Like others have mentioned, the desire to eat super spicy things builds with time. I started out with one of those green habanero sauces they give you at mexican restaraunts. Pretty soon (within a week or so, I’ve found) that level of heat will not give you the “rush” anymore and you up it a notch.
I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll add a milder hot sauce for the flavor, and then a few dashes of Dave’s Ghost Pepper or something comparable for the actual heat. There is a certain rush you get out of eating it that makes you have an itch for spicy food. Not only does it taste good, but it feels good.
If you don’t steadily increase your tolerance and just jump straight into Ghost Peppers or something, then yeah, it is going to be miserable and no one would do it. Surprisingly your tolerance for spicy food increases very rapidly if you continually like to eat it. It took me about a month to go from habanero sauce to chipping up ghost peppers in my food.
Apples and oranges. Portions of the population are more immune to the ‘heat’ effects of peppers. They simply don’t experience the same level of discomfort.
A ghost pepper is another man’s jalapeno.
I think the same when I see eaters loading their Prime rib with a half inch thick layer of horseradish- whereas I add the tiniest amount- like salt or pepper.
I am all for spicy to enhance the flavor of the food I am eating, but I want to taste the steak sandwich.
It sounds like the problem isn’t the spiciness, but just the amount of peppers they put on your sandwich (and that you’d have the same issue if they were sweet). Maybe they just do a bad version and would be better off using hotter peppers and just less of them.
I am not familiar with Old Chicago, and have no idea what this steak sandwich looks like, but I suppose it’s a heck of a lot more peppers than what is depicted on their webpage.
My last two of these had about five times as many peppers as are in the one pictured. I left enough peppers on the sandwich that I had some Anaheim in every bite. I like Anaheim peppers. I use them at home quite often, along with Jalapenos and habaneros.
I just don’t care for heat just for heat’s sake.
Reasons to not start drinking alcohol:
- Smells bad
- Tastes bad
- Makes your brain delirious
- Gives you a headache if drank beyond moderation
- Makes you physically ill if drank beyond moderation
- Generally more expensive than non-alcoholic drinks
Reasons to start drinking alcohol:
- Helps you muster up the courage to talk with chicks. Otherwise, as evolution teaches us, animals could never muster up the courage to find mates and the species would collapse.
Reasons to not start drinking gasoline:
- Smells bad
- Tastes bad
- Makes your brain delirious
- Gives you a headache if drank beyond moderation
- Makes you physically ill if drank beyond moderation
- Generally more expensive than non-gasoline-instilled drinks
Reasons to start drinking gasoline:
- Helps you muster up the courage to talk with chicks. Otherwise, as evolution teaches us, animals could never muster up the courage to find mates and the species would collapse.
Overall, I’d have to say that assuming that something is patently stupid and that the fact that the stupidity can be learned to be enjoyable isn’t a very solid predictor of behavior.
I agree, but it sounds like we may have two different ideas of what level of heat is for heat’s sake. As said above by many different posters, it’s all what you’re used to. For example, when I get a New Mexican-style green chile burger (which is usually made with Anaheims here, to be honest), I want to taste the actual green chile flavor, because it’s so delicious. (When I go to Arizona, I bring back several pounds of frozen New Mexican chiles [not the kind that’s sold in the freezer section, but I freeze the freshly roasted ones you’ll find at grocery stores]. They’re not particularly spicy–at least not the ones I get–but their flavor is just awesome. I could live on green chiles.)
Tangent:
Where are all these new, hottest-ever peppers coming from? Are they being specially bred? Or have they always been around, but people didn’t try to eat them (much)?
Seems like over the last few decades, some new pepper comes on the scene as the “hottest evah!” every few years. I remember a time then habaneros were weird, not readily found, and over the top. Jalapenos were about as hot as anyone ever cared to get.
Since then, habaneros have been kicked down to basically the same “level of respect” as a green bell pepper. Ghost peppers, scotch bonnets, and now … scorpion peppers?
This is all really just stunt food, right?
Another one. Did this pepper even exist 5 years ago? :dubious:
Many of these newest “hot” peppers are natural peppers that are discovered.
IIRC the Carolina Reaper was breed by a hobbyist/enthusiast not that long ago.
A “problem” with these “new” peppers is that they often are not heat stable. Or in other words from plant to plant and generation to generation you get a large range of heat. It takes careful selective breeding to get consistency.
Habaneros are not seen by anyone as “green bell peppers” in terms of “respect.” At least not in my experience. Habaneros have been around here for as long as I can remember, honestly, but I live in a neighborhood with a large Mexican population, and there is some Caribbean influence around here as well (who are big on those peppers or similar ones.) If you can eat habeneros (especially just plain raw habs on their own) then you have a very high tolerance for spice.
Scotch bonnets are the same level of heat as habaneros. Ghost peppers hit it big about five to maybe ten years ago at the most. Scorps seemed to have only shown up about 3-5 years ago.
You can read a bit about ranking, breeding, and controversy of the superhots here.
Once you get beyond habanero heat, I don’t really notice much of a different in how hot one pepper is versus another. The most I notice is that I need a bit less of the pepper, but the heat and sting is very similar eating a habanero vs eating a ghost pepper or scorpion.
Exactly. A few years ago I grew habaneros, bonnets, fatalii, bhut jolokia (ghost), and Trinidad maruga scorpion as my super-hots. In my garden, under my conditions, the scorp was indeed the hottest, but I felt the fatalii was hotter (and tastier) than the bhut jolokia, even though the ghost was the second hottest pepper at the time.
Growing conditions also make a difference too. Well-watered plants grown in moderate temperatures produce higher yields of less-fiery peppers than plants that are grown in more sunny, arid conditions - the stress makes them produce more capsaicin.
I woukdnt be surprised if completeness of pollination also has an effect, as much of the heat is associated with the seeds.
Agreed in general … but I’m assuming habanero consumption doesn’t much impress the calor gratis calor set.
Eh, if you can eat habaneros, you can probably eat the other superpeppers, too. Going from jalapeno to habanero is a factor of something like 100 in spiciness: That’s a big deal. Going from a habanero to the hottest peppers is only something like a factor of 3: That’s just “don’t eat so much of it”.