True. I’ve had to explain to a number of people that a lot of cumin, say, won’t make something hot.
As other posters have pointed out, this is kind of blurring out the complexities of flavor profiles. A deeply flavorful umami-heavy beef stew, or rich cheesy mashed fresh potatoes, definitely don’t have a hot or pungent flavor, but equally definitely I wouldn’t call them “bland”. (And I’ve lived in India, and eaten and loved lots of spicy foods.)
There are certainly a lot of mediocre white-people foods that ARE bland: poor ingredients, unimaginatively cooked and seasoned, don’t taste of anything much. Or straight-up invalid food like blancmange and Cream of Wheat and saltines. But I think using “bland” to mean just “not hot or pungent” is considerably flattening out the taste universe of non-hot foods.
Yeah, I’m not quite @silenus and love habaneros, but I wouldn’t really call those hot sauces “hot” either.
They suit me fine. I don’t want anything so hot it masks the taste of the food.
Everyone’s entitled to their own preference of course, but I don’t think a food needs to be piquant to avoid the label of “bland”. Japanese curry has rich umami character and a number of different spices, and the fact that they don’t cause pain or burning isn’t cause to dismiss them as “bland”.
To me, bland is simply a food that lacks salt, umami, spices, and/or acidity. Salted mashed potatoes might be boring or basic or unsophisticated, but they’re not really “bland”. I don’t think anything tomato-based could be called bland. Most Indian and Chinese food existed before chiles were imported from the new world, and I don’t think anyone would accuse it of being bland (though a lot of what we consider as typical “Indian” or “Chinese” is fairly modern and influenced by Western ingredients).
Case in point.
Thank you.
Yes, there are thousands of identifiable flavors out there. I happen to dislike capsaicin. (And in large quantities, it makes me sick. Not the hotness of it, something that’s also in green pepper and sweet red paper makes me ill. But i don’t like that type of spicy, either.)
But i love food, and i love interesting flavors and new-to-me flavor profiles. I have a large cupboard full of spices (the ones we use most often are in a double spice rack next to the stove). And many foods have delightful flavors of their own. I just made our passover dessert, which is a meringue crust filled with lemon cream and topped with whipped cream. The flavors (in addition to sweet) include some caramelized meringue, intense lemon, butterfat, and some vanilla notes in the topping. It’s not bland.
I also made a chocolate oblivion truffle torte. 1lb of good quality 70% chocolate, ½ lb butter, 6 whole eggs. It’s more bitter than sweet, with a pronounced chocolate flavor mellowed by the richness of the butter and the eggs. And it melts in your mouth, for a nice mouth-feel. Not bland.
My BIL is making a chicken dish that includes lemon juice, capers, and black olives. There will not be any pepper in it. (Actually, there will be black pepper, a delightful spice, in it, but just as a background note. It won’t have any capsaicin.) It’s a pungent and complex dish. Not bland.
When we host, we make Madhur Jaffrie’s fried mashed potatoes with mustard seeds. It has a rich potato flavor, but also has butter, a sour note (amchoor, or lemon juice) caramelized onions, some other rich spices in the background (turmeric, cinnamon…) and of course the mustard seeds, which add both visual and textural interest as well as flavor. Not bland.
I think lots of people lean on “hot pepper” as their only seasoning. Or at least, that’s the impression i often get. I don’t think that makes your food any less bland than the food of those who lean on black pepper as their only seasoning. (It also makes it all toxic, as far as I’m concerned.)
And…i have a good sense of smell and taste. There are some completely unseasoned foods that i think have delicious flavors of their own. One of my favorite dishes is a plain roast chicken. I buy a flavorful breed of chicken that’s been allowed to forage, and cook it in a convection oven until the skin is dark and crispy. It has a delightful rich chicken flavor. But my husband has mostly lost his sense of smell and taste with age, and he puts hot sauce on it, because he can’t taste “chicken” any more. So to him, it’s bland. But I’ve had bland flavorless chicken, it’s different. To me. (He used to be able to taste chicken. His uncle had the same problem in his old age, and bemoaned that nothing tasted good to him any more.)
I dunno, we don’t really have enough words. “Hot” can refer to the actual temperature. Other spices (Ginger, black pepper, ..) can also give a “hot” sensation. Lots of spices that aren’t “hot” at all might also be called “spicy” (thyme, cumin, amchoor, tarragon, caraway…) but usually aren’t. If it’s important, i use lots of words.
Chili con carne is essentially curry.
Right- there are lots of savory foods out there that aren’t picante (to use the Spanish term) or spicy, meaning lots of spices used, but that are far from bland.
Case in point- New England style fish chowder. I think it’s got five ingredients (fish, stock, potatoes, cream, onions) along with salt and pepper, but it’s a long way from bland if it’s done well.
Or Texas style barbecue. It’s another five ingredient recipe (meat, salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder) that along with a decent smoker makes something that’s light-years from bland.
What I have noticed is that a LOT of people dramatically undersalt their food, and aren’t aware of the things they can do to make their food better, even within the constraints of their existing recipes. Things like searing it well, seasoning (salt) it properly, and adjusting the acid at the end of cooking are all things that make a surprising difference to nearly any recipe.
It’s the difference between being a good cook and a poor one, honestly. Good cooks can make/follow simple recipes without making a bland product. Bad cooks can often ruin an otherwise decent recipe by deciding to add less salt, or substitute ingredients without really understanding what that does.
I’ve spotted that when helping my sons’ Scout troop cook meals. Often they follow the recipe, but don’t realize that a tiny amount of extra love might make the recipe considerably better. Browning things, chopping them smaller (or larger), adjusting acid/sugar/salt, or just buying better ingredients where it counts are all things that can have a huge impact on a dish that would otherwise be lacking in flavor (bland).
Similar, but more of a case of convergent evolution than a descendant of curry. Chili actually grew out of the European stew/soup tradition mixed with native american ingredients and methods. They just happen to be kind of similar. Along the same lines, Cincinnati chili is really more of a Greek stew that was adapted to have chiil powder in it; it’s not a lineal descendant of the original chili that evolved in San Antonio.
Yes, it’s very much a “Ship of Theseus” problem of continuous evolution across cultures and generations. How much does pizza in Chicago resemble the pizza in Naples? And that’s only evolution across a few cultures and generations. Ketchup has been evolving across many cultures and centuries.
In another timeline, what Americans call “ketchup” could be called “chutney”.
I would disagree with that. To me “bland” means “very little seasoning whatsoever”. Like my mom’s cooking, for example (yes, I said it, my mom’s cooking is bland). She will take a lean piece of meat like a boneless skinless chicken breast, sprinkle a very small about of salt and pepper on just one side of if, and broil it until it’s well done. Resulting in a nearly flavorless meal that I couldn’t eat as a kid without smothering it with barbecue sauce or other condiments.
And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with salt and pepper as seasonings per se, just use more of them if that’s what you’re going to use. It’s like what @bump said earlier – she dramatically under salts her food. And insists on lean cuts of meat, because she believes salt and fat are unhealthy. Really I think it’s mostly the lack of fat and salt in her cooking that results in the blandness.
Yes, when I think of bland food, I think of my mother’s cooking- gray meat, overcooked canned vegetables, tomato sauce with nothing but maybe salt and pepper. She’s just a terrible cook. It’s not even that those are her preferences- when someone else is cooking, she prefers rare beef. But apparently she doesn’t know how to cook it rare.
Lol. I was all ready to reply about how people have different preferences, and anyone who can cook food the way they want it is a decent cook, even if you or i don’t care for their food. (I prefer less salt than many people, except when I’ve been sweating a lot, when i love love love salt.) But yeah, your mom is a terrible cook.
Not in my experience. Sure, they’ll discuss other spices, but they won’t call them spicy. Now it doens’t necessarily mean capsaicin, though that would be what I’d understand by default. I know horseradish can be called spicy, for example. But even the less common stuff is stuff that creates that burning sensation on the tongue.
That is, in particular areas. I perceive the use of “spicy” instead of “heavily spiced” to be a regional thing. And, yes, the more uncommon hot spicy foods are in that region, the more likely they’ll use it that way.
If you tell me something is spicy, I’m definitely not going to expect just a dish with a lot of cumin. I’m not going to expect my dad’s eggs which he profoundly over-seasons, but is only barely spicy.
Now, when it comes to “bland” meaning “not (hot) spicy”, I do associate that with those who put hot sauce on everything. The common retort is that they’ve “burnt their taste buds off,” and I do wonder if they have trouble tasting other flavors and spices.
Anecdotally, it seems common in smokers.
Yeah. The quest for hotter and hotter can be dangerous- well, kinda. Really hot food releases endorphins, which make you feel good. But the body gets a tolerance so to get those endorphins you have to eat hotter and hotter foods, eventually ruining your taste.
Texas Chili.
Right. Blue cheese- and other strong cheeses- not bland.
Same here.
But I like horseradish.
See above- too many are chasing the endorphins.
Right.
Is your claim that spicy food physically degrades tastes receptors? I’d love to see a reference for that.
I’m not DrDeth, and i don’t believe that. But i do observe that my husband is chasing a failing sense of taste by adding more hot sauce. I think he no longer gets as much stimulation as he’d like from flavor alone, and is adding heat to make up for that.
That’s a bit different. I’ve known a few elderly people whose sense of taste and smell became muted over time, and they followed that same path by leaning into spicy foods a bit more than they ever had as younger people.
But it doesn’t “ruin your taste” as @DrDeth says. I’m assuming he means that eventually you develop such a tolerance to spicy food that you’re essentially ruined for anything less spicy. Which isn’t the case; I love medium-to-hot spicy food, but still also love a lot of non-spicy dishes My taste certainly isn’t ruined.
Capsaicin isn’t a flavor molecule that we pick up with our taste buds or scent receptors, but rather a compound that binds with a certain nerve receptor and depolarizes it, causing the nerve to send the same sort of impulses that it would for heat exposure. You don’t taste it, and it doesn’t actually injure you in amounts used in food, even very spicy foods. And it won’t ruin your taste buds or aroma receptors either.
Humans can get used to a lot of different things. Heat, freezing cold, constant pain, capsaicin-laced foods, tobacco, caffeine, marijuana, opioids, amphetamines, barbiturates, adrenaline rushes, etc.
I strongly doubt capsaicin in high doses is physically damaging anyone’s taste receptors. I can certainly believe that one can become at least partly accustomed to it, and need a higher dose to obtain the same subjective sensation of effects. The muting of the signal isn’t in the mouth though; it’s in the mind.
For a while, yes-
, you cannot permanently destroy your taste buds. Eating spicy foods can hurt your tongue and make you less able to perceive the spice, but your taste receptors won’t be gone forever—
https://academic.oup.com/chemse/article-abstract/10/4/579/423834
Yes, but capsaicin can temporally ruin your taste ability. But it comes back. But as you said the main thing is that you develop a tolerance for capsaicin giving you endorphins, so you want hotter and hotter foods.
Only temporarily.
Right.
Ok so it doesn’t ruin your sense taste. That’s what I thought. It is a persistent myth though it seems, likely rooted in not so nice ideas about the types of cultures that typically use spicy ingredients.