My mother didn’t cook with anything spicy. Chicken cacciatore got a tiny bit of cayenne pepper, not enough to give it any significant heat. Otherwise cinnamon was about as spicy as she got. The main flavor enhancers were onion and salt; and not very much salt. Some specific herbs were used in particular dishes, as were vinegar and citric acid.
Her food was excellent. She selected quality ingredients with their own flavor, and combined them in a variety of ways.
I’m all in favor of expanding one’s taste. But “no hot spices” doesn’t need to equal “boring and tasteless”.
I read an article a while ago, and I can’t recall where, so take this with a grain of salt (and a jalapeño). But it was spot on in describing me, so I’ve always remembered it.
The piece posited that there is a direct correlation between people with muted palates and a love of spicy foods. I don’t think “muted” is the right word or the one the author used, but it meant people whose palates had difficulty detecting subtle flavors. Such people prefer bold tastes, since that’s the only thing that pops for them.
That’s me in a nutshell. My brother is a gourmet who would prepare fantastic meals, and he’d ask me if I tasted some combination of spices or herbs, some underlying flavor that made the dish special. I always wished I could, but nope. It was tasty, for sure, but I’m ashamed to admit that he probably could have fooled me with a frozen dinner he picked up at the supermarket.
I think I’m probably what qualifies as a sensation seeker. I like spicy food. It’s interesting.
I don’t have any particular desire to try to eat the hottest peppers - scotch bonnets are about my level at present, but the more (and more frequently) you eat them the less they taste hot, so I am finding that I need to add more of them just to achieve the same perceived level of warmth.
I’ve been eating them more lately to help with an inflammatory condition - and they really do work - relief of symptoms within minutes of eating hot peppers, but only if I eat enough of them to feel the burn.
Meanwhile, I grew up with Polish food. Definitely nothing spicier than black pepper there. Yet as an adult, I crave the hottest spiciest foods I can find.
Which ties nicely back into my earlier statement about the quality of meat and other ingredients being used. Cheap and/or bland but filling foods can benefit the most (of course, depending on personal tastes).
Higher quality, more flavorful foods, and ones cooked with care with complementary flavors (or even contrasting!) often don’t need a “Bam!” of something to inspire interest.
It is strange to me that so many of you claim spicy food is tasty, because for me it is just the opposite. Above a certain level of spicy all taste is numbed and I only feel the heat. Which can be funny, up to a level.
My mother was a solid good cook, often classical German and Spanish dishes, nothing fancy, exotic or hot. When I ate my first hot Indian dish in Berlin, and it was very hot for German standards, I finished it bravely, but I wondered where the taste was. I only felt hot. And felt it again at the other end the next day! Now that was uncool. Same for my first hot Mexican dish.
Now I wonder what it is you claim to taste in hot spices. I appreciate moderately spicy where spicy is a sensation, but not so overwhelming as to erase the other tastes (sweet, salty etc). Because when everything else is gone I feel I could have eaten cardboard with capsaicin and I lament all the other good stuff that has gone into that dish and now flies under my taste-radar.
I mean, matters of taste and subjective experience are pretty much the definition of YMMV. I’ll put it to you this way: spiciness is one of my favorite flavor sensations, and what to you is “tasting nothing but spice and heat” is almost surely to me “has a bit of a kick with lots of flavor.” I’ve literally never eaten anything where the only thing I could taste is spice except for one of those Paqui one chip challenge chips, and, even then I could taste the awful corn and chemical flavor beneath it.
Remember, we all experience things differently. Your “moderate spicy” is likely “I can barely taste any heat.” So I get surprised in the opposite way to you. I’ve had people describe foods as spicy where I literally cannot detect any heat.
I like it because a lot of the dishes I grew up with were spicy. Chili, tacos and burritos with hot sauce, Asian beef dishes with whole red peppers in them, etc. If it doesn’t have some strong spices, I’m probably not that interested in it.
YMMV indeed. I still wonder what the taste of spiciness would be if the spiciness did not knock off my sense of taste. I guess I’ll never know: how could you explain it? I could not explain saltiness either.
So I guess there is a genetic element. You probably can train yourself to numb the heat away up to a degree, but in my case I believe nature is more important than nurture.
My blood is 100% Central/Eastern European. I doubt there’s much slide tolerance in my genetics. The first time I had Tabasco as a kid, I remember it being blisteringly hot. Now it’s just mildly spicy vinegar.
There is certainly some level of spice where it overwhelms flavor, but where that level is varies from person to person. When I’m eating something very spicy, I am enjoying the other flavors, as well as the spice, even if most folks eating the same dish wouldn’t be.
“Hot” is, itself, one flavor component. What it’s paired with depends on what hot food you’re eating. For peppers, specifically, you can get most of the same flavors from mild peppers. But one seldom makes a meal of just peppers.
Spice is a funny thing. My mother liked to cook curries and eating food with spicy lime pickle. Growing up, our favourite places to eat out served hot vindaloo (with the mandatory warning from the owner) or spicy Szechuan. I learned to make most of the spicy food I still often crave.
In medical school, I spent an elective studying in India. I found that while I love very spicy food for lunch and dinner, I find it overwhelming at breakfast. I’ll still splash Tabasco sauce over my eggs and potatoes. But I don’t consider Tabasco very spicy; I just like the flavour.
The seldom saved you from me. A couple of times a year, I will have a salad of roasted fresh hatch peppers, with nothing more than a lite crumble of cotija on top, just for the flavor contrast.
IMO, each type of pepper has its own flavor qualities, not just heat. I’ve had some wonderful habanero-based sauces that were delicious, but really not that hot. But a jalapeno has a much different flavor than a Thai chili or a serrano, or those delicious little red peppers that are an essential part of kung pao. If the peppers were only hot but devoid of flavor, I’d have far less interest in them.
Disclaimer: I grew up eating spicy foods and I can’t imagine stopping any time soon.
I think that’s probably true for everyone, but that “certain level” varies. I love hot, spicy foods. I mean stuff that makes my eyes water and my nose run. But part of that enjoyment is the flavors that abound.
OTOH, I’ve tasted pepper dishes that were so intense that it tasted like hot sludge. Nothing tasty about it, just heat. But I’m sure there are those who tasted the same dish and marveled at the exquisite taste. I think we all just have a different threshold.
A couple of times a year, I will have a salad of roasted fresh hatch peppers, with nothing more than a lite crumble of cotija on top, just for the flavor contrast.