I’m not a big fan of self-inflicted pain, so don’t mess with hot peppers. I do know, for the sake of this question, that when you have acid-hot wings prepared at Duffs in Buffalo and wrapped for shipment in aluminum foil, the sauce eats its way through the aluminum before you get to Boston, stinks up the whole car and ruins your trunk carpet.
To me, once you get to the ultrahots, it’s hard to distinguish. It’s just a matter of how concentrated the capsaicin punch is. I mean, hell, I eat habaneros all the time, but even serranos and jalapenos can get to me sometimes if I eat enough of them in a short enough period of time that the effect accumulates before diminishing. Like I could probably chug Tabasco all day–the heat dissipates quickly enough, but if I try downing a bottle of El Yacateco, it’ll probably have the same effect on me as a couple drops of something like 2M Scoville Wanza’s Wicked hot sauce. Or one whole habanero might have the same effect on me as, I dunno, 5 or 10 hot serranos (I say “hot,” because they vary wildly) eaten in quick succession.
See, I’ve had the hottest wings on offer at Duff’s, and I was disappointed. There was another place in Buffalo I went to, though, Bar Bill’s I think, that did suicide wings so hot I barely finished them.
I went to a Szechuan restaurant and ordered kung pao shrimp, and neglected to order it “mild”. Mixed in with the dish were what looked like green onion slices. I ate one, and spent the rest of the meal in blinding pain, trying to drink enough water to rinse the agony out of my mouth. When I could speak, I asked the waiter what that green thing was. He said “jalapeno”, but I know a jalapeno when I taste one and that wasn’t one. I think it was some hellish variant of ghost pepper.
It would be odd to see ghost peppers at a Szechuan restaurant. And they’re normally not used until they get orange or red. If they were round, it’s doubtful they were ghosts. I’m guessing if not jalapenos, then serranos, or if they were really little round circles, something like a Thai chile pepper.
Here’s the thread in which I try Flashbang, 5 million Scoville units of heat.
I survived with no real damage thru judicious use of a tiny, tiny sample and a lot of casein-containing neutralizing agent.
i see no reason to do that again however.
Water just moves the heat around. You need sour cream, yogurt, milk, or similar.
In low concentrations, the hottest I’ve ever had would probably be Scotch bonnets. My mom grew some in her garden because the seeds were mislabeled as bells, but she knew enough not to trust them once she saw what they grew into. She gave them to me, and I dried and crushed them. It’s good, but I only add a small shake to any given dish I use them in.
As far as total quantity consumed in one sitting, that’d probably be either the one time that I managed to convince an Indian place to give me a 10 out of 10 on their spiciness scale, or the time I tried the “liquid fire” sauce from a hole-in-the-wall wing place just off campus. In both cases, though, it was only a little above my threshold: I have a very high tolerance for Indian spices, and while I don’t have as much for chili peppers, I know enough to escalate carefully with them.
The first time I ever tried jambalaya, I couldn’t eat it because it was too hot. I did, however, take the leftovers home, and cooked a volume of rice approximately equal to that of the leftovers. THAT was perfect.
A whole habaneros pepper. It was sitting with all the other more mundane peppers in the salad bar. I had no idea what it was until it was too late. I popped it in my mouth and chewed it up like it was any other pepper. I like spicy food and have built up a pretty good tolerance over the years but that was too much.
Well, you know, if it burns going in, chances are it’s going to burn on the way out, too.
I routinely eat Mrs. Renfro’s Ghost Pepper Salsa, which is about the limit of what heat I’ll take (you want to talk about ring sting, eat too much of this stuff and you’ll probably be ready to smear Aloe Vera gel on your toilet paper before you wipe).
I love Thai curry, but when I go to a Thai restaurant, when they ask me how spicy I want it, I simply tell them to make it like they would for a Thai person. That usually gets the best results.
Eating through aluminum foil has more to do with the acid (most likely vinegar) in the sauce rather than spices. I’ve found tiny holes eaten through the foil over my version of bachelor chow after keeping it in the fridge overnight.
I’ve had serranos, and these were not serranos. They were very thin-walled and easy to mistake for a slice of green onion. They were some kind of thin-skinned little pepper, maybe Thais as you say.
I’d have had milk, yogurt, or the like had the restaurant served such. No chance!
I’ve since gone to a different Szechuan restaurant and ordered the same dish, this time remembering to specify “mild”. The mild version was plenty hot and extremely yummy.
I’ve grown habaneros. I found out the hard way that even the stems have heat.
Do not rub your eyes after picking habaneros. That is all. :o
IIRC, I kept a couple for cooking and gave the rest to a soup kitchen - plainly labeled. I have no idea if they were able to use them.
Dipped a stick into a bottle of extreme hot sauce and touched it to my tongue.
Something in that category sounds about right to me. Ghosts, or any pepper of that variety, are not circular when cut into rings. They have a few dimples in them. Thais, cayenne, kung pao peppers, etc. would have that circular shape.
I went with a friend to a place that had hot wings in the following spiciness levels: mild, medium, hot, suicide, and foolish. Other places’ “suicide” wings were no big deal, so we tried “foolish”. Talk about truth in advertising…
Stax Xtra flamin’ hot potato crisps.
I’ve eaten hot things before. There is a hot dog shack here in town called Pat’s that has extra hot chili dogs. But I can’t eat these crisps unless I put the plain side on my tongue. They’re too hot for me to put the spicy side on my tongue.
I made a nice egg salad with peppers way hotter than habaneros, but I knew what I was doing and while hot it was fine. (I have a high threshold.)
The hottest ever was a hot and sour soup in a Thai restaurant in Boston. There were lots and lots of jalapeno slices floating in it, and they must have been hotter ones than I’m used to. It too me a beer and a half to finish it. It was amazing!
I’d about guarantee they were Thai chilies.
I love fairly hot spicy food and most Thai food doesn’t phase me, even when ordered hot hot. But there’s a little tiny joint in a little tiny village on the California coast, name of Little Noi’s. Excellent authentic Thai food.
Place was too small for seating, so the locals could only order takeout. The chef, Little Noi, would stand up on a wooden box to reach her wok. If she was cooking the order hot hot, you choked hard when you walked in the door due to all the capsaicin floating around in the air, and your eyes would water in copious fashion.
I never dared to order anything past medium there – and at that, it was plenty hot. She’d have surely killed me off if I’d ever ordered even regular hot.
Thai chilies.