It’s not that I like to torture myself…I actually don’t like things that are all heat and no flavor…but I have been ‘burning’ my tongue all day with these damn wasabi peas. They’re just so fricking GOOD! I eat them until my tongue curdles and/or my sinuses explode one too many times, then I put them down. 5 minutes later I pick them back up; rinse/repeat.
My poor, poor tongue. 
Ooo, ooo, ooo! Me, me, me!
I love hot and spicy stuff. Unfortunately as each year goes by, hot and spicy stuff likes me less. But i’m not giving up on it, just cutting back a little for now. Those few minutes between tasting and digesting are still a pleasure.
Ooh, are those peas made by a snack company from Thailand called Hapi Snacks? If so, I absolutely share your addiction to them! I like the chili-garlic flavor better than the wasabi though. But man, that is such a random, obscure little product; I can’t believe someone else likes them!
Must vary by location. Wasabi peas are pretty common around here–my local grocery even has its own homemade mix.
No, I’m referring to the specific brand Hapi Snacks green peas. That’s why I asked him if that is what he was talking about. Do you have those in your local grocery?
I do this sometimes.
I used to go to BW3 on 25 cent or whatever wing night and get the Blazin’ sauce, which is their hottest one. I could eat the wings, but I’d be pouring sweat and tears would be welling. And you’d have to run to the restroom and scrub your hands and face to avoid touching your eye with sauce residue or something. Even after a shower the next morning, putting your contacts in would burn like Hell.
But it wasn’t for showing off, it was for the aforementioned endorphin rush. I also remember there was no indigestion or the like – to the contrary, when I was doing that regularly any indigestion just basically disappeared across the board (even from acidic things that sometimes give me weird trouble, like spaghetti sauce).
The super hot peppers also sometimes have the good, subtle flavor behind the heat. Habanero and Scotch Bonnet stand out in this regard. I’ve had chili that’s made basically with a bunch of shredded meat and a bunch of habaneros and slow cooked for hours – no tomato sauce, the peppers break down and provide the necessary cooking fluid and fruit component. By the time it’s done, it’s pretty doggone spicy but also really, really redolent of complex fruit/vegetable flavor.
Yes. They are the regular brand. Target has them, even, in both wasabi and Srirachi.
Then I stand corrected.
YES!
I brought home some leftover inferno wings from the bar along with the cup of extra inferno sauce (think paste) and made a scorching bowl of spicy ramen with the sauce and cut up chicken. I cracked a couple of raw eggs into it, and it was hellish in a heavenly way.
Any good recipes for an inferno paste? I really like this one bar’s version because it is not just hot but has a great depth of flavor. Habenero powder maybe?
I grow my own hot peppers of various types and make hot sauces out of em. You can definitely tell the difference in the flavors. Its not just the heat. Recently I hit on a recipe I like with peppers. When we make a 6 quart pot of chili we put in two habeneros and 6 cayanes. You have to let it simmer a good while or even sit a night or two to get the pepper hotness into the chili. It gives just the right amount of heat and flavor I think. Its hot enough but it fades fairly quickly.
Oh, and for people looking to play with peppers, its fairly common, at least around here, to have various hot peppers for sale at the suppermarket/Walmart.
Try soaking your hands in milk for a couple minutes. Works to both neutralize the oils on your hands, and take away any burning feeling.
OM NOM NOM! <3 me some hot food! between nine and thirteen assorted hot sauces in my fridge right now. Sriracha is my catsup!
Partner likes stuff hotter than I do, though.
A Texan taught me to remove chili oils by pouring equal proportions of any cooking oil and liquid dish soap into my hand, swirling them into an opaque fluid, and washing peppered areas with the mixture. Works good! (So do latex gloves…)
For some reason, I love things that have a lot of black pepper, even if it totally burns my mouth. But regular peppers not so much. The worst are pickled jalapenos: the heat tastes so incredibly sour. At least chiles are okay when mixed with stuff. Eating those jalapenos is only fun in that way of trying to see who can get the nastiest tasting stuff.
I was so happy when I learned that those jalapenos were pickled, and that the real thing tasted so much better.
I lived in Sichuan, which has a similar thing going on. Pretty much every dish, at every meal, is extremely spicy. Everyone sits around the dinner table crying and blowing their noses. Every meal comes with a huge stack of napkins for this very reason. But the food is amazing- fresh, healthy, flavorful. Mmm.
I miss it every day. Food just isn’t as good without that rush of endorphins.
We had a thread recently about red jalapenos. Those taste way better IMO than the green ones. They may be hotter (or at least the hot juices are released more easily when you chew them.).
I don’t really consider it torture, but most of the Summer I have started out the day by getting the newspaper and picking whatever is red and ripe off my Cayenne plants and either eating it straight up, whole- seeds and all- after washing it under water and utilizing the residual moisture to adhere the dipping salt, or cutting up several and eating them with tomatoes as a salad.
And the cayennes are very hot, certainly nothing to sneeze at, but the tiny Thai Dragon or Bird Chiles that I grew are where it’s at, they are like tiny, fruity, fire bombs that will linger and burn out your tongue for a good half an hour afterwards when eaten straight up. And no fair just kind of biting them and swallowing… gotta chew them up and savor them, actually taste them. I reserved the bulk of the thai dragons, for two jars of a very simple homemade chile garlic paste (Chiles, garlic, salt, vinegar) that I used on and in everything from soups, to eggs, and chili, and meatloaf. They all came in ripe at about the same time and although, I love chiles, there was no way I could eat the hundred and something ruby red blazers without preserving them or extending them, in some way. I have taken to drying the stragglers, here in the late season, which I have never done before, and was quite surprised that I could simply let them sit on the kitchen countertop and let them naturally dessicate and dry. Of course, they are tiny and thin skinned chinensis type peppers, so you probably couldn’t do that quite as successfully with other thicker and more substantial peppers where you would need the heat of the sun.
One thing that bothers me, and is new with my chile experience, within the last few years, when I have eaten something very hot, usually a straight up hot pepper, I will often break into hiccups. I have been eating spicy for years, and it is only recently that this phenomenon has started and I find it quite unpleasant, although it hasn’t curbed my chile intake. I tend to believe that this sudden hiccuping stage might indicate that I have apnea.
Oh, and I have had occasion to eat very, very, hot Jalapenos from people’s gardens (not mass produced supermarket varieties) that might come close or equal to the lower end on my cayenne peppers on the scoville scale.
Am I addicted to chiles? I suppose so, kind of, but I really enjoy their flavor, as well, I am not strictly addicted to the heat experience. I am kind of addicted to seeing how I can flavor them and make them really tasty in combination with other ingredients, and hope maybe someday to invent a condiment that everybody will want to have a constant supply of in their house… kind of my little “chef’s fantasy”.
Yes.
And I happen to think the same happens with hops in beer, but I’m probably on less-firm ground on that claim.
I maintain no one really likes IPA. 
And you’d be wrong.
Or, perhaps, just perhaps, the sensitivity of those who are used to very spicy foods is much higher than those who are not used to them, and therefore much higher heat levels are required to generate the same sort of burn non-spicy eaters get at much lower levels. Believe it or not, I taste the flavor of food fine underneath the heat of a habanero. When I make jerk sauce, for me, it’s getting that proper balance of habanero and allspice flavor with just a bit of thyme (and scallions, garlic, brown sugar, etc.) What is “proper balance” to me and some of my friends who eat hot food regularly is “how the hell do you taste anything but heat” in this? But I do taste fruity habanero or Scotch bonnet, fragrant allspice, sweet brown sugar, a touch of citrus, along with the pleasant burn of the chilis.
Many people seem to think it’s all about machismo. Perhaps in some cases there is, but when I reach for the habaneros or Thai chilis or whatnot, it’s because I love the flavor and heat of them. I never have so much that I can’t taste the underlying flavors. It’ all about balance.