Can you handle the heat?

I have a weak stomach. It’s gotten better over the years, but I still fear extremely spicy foods. I probably wouldn’t even eat a whole pepper, out of fear. I’d probably take a nibble.

Me gusta spicy food! But only to a point. I’ve eaten several habaneros, and won’t again. Nothing good comes of habaneros.

I should have given the habanero advice in the earlier thread about overcoming constipation!

I don’t believe eating should include suffering! I stay away from the hot stuff, thank you.

Bring on the HOT stuff!

I will put sriracha on anything whenever I get the chance (noodles, pizza, pasta, etc)

I grew up eating spicy food so it’s like a necessity for me. I can eat without it, but it just tastes better to me when it has a little spice in it. I love eating jalapeños with sandwiches and burgers. Salsa is a must in tacos or any other Mexican food. My dad alway says, “If the salsa is not spicy, then it’s not good enough”. So you can only imagine my mothers cuisine every day.

I’m definitely not into spicy food. I can barely stand even the mildest of sauces or spices.

I do laugh when people start sweating though. Definitely not cool on a first date! :P

I do like a bit of heat; but, not too hot to where all that you experience is massive heat, and, miss out on the flavor (that’s how it is for me). I add a bit of this to a lot of food..

That woman be crazay!

I had the volcano burrito from taco bell the other day and I had to load it with about 3 packages of their fire sauce in order for it to have a minimal effect on me. My boss had the volcano taco and could barely finish it as is… It was pretty funny.

Sriracha is one of the most disgusting condiments ever created, though its got nothing on mayonnaise (cringes). I’ll stick with the Good Ol’ Stuff.

Thank you Frank, thank you.

Taco Bell mild is too much for me! I do not like to be in pain when I eat.

I enjoy the burn!
I once lost a bet and had to pop 3 Habaneros in my mouth and eat them in less than 4 minutes. It was hell! But I liked it.

My tolerance for heat is very low. I chalk it up to eating bland food as a child.

I can stand a little bit of heat in my food. I will take a dash of Frank’s Red Hot once in a while, but that’s about it for me.

I love spicy food, but not to the point where I have to drink ice water every few seconds. If that’s happening, it’s too hot. I share my love of spicy food with pretty much everyone in my family except my dad who seems to like things hotter than the rest of us. My mom on the other hand seems to prefer things less hot than the rest of us, but not by much. But when my parents cook, they never make anything too hot. Indian food is essentially the hottest food there is and I like most forms of it. There are some dishes, however, that are just too hot for me.

On a scale of 0 – XXX, I fall about X

When my friends come over my house, they bring their own food….They can’t handle the HOTness.
I come from a family that loves spicy food.
It’s in my blood.

I like spicy food, but not overly spicy. I never could understand the people that load on the heat. I dont know, i like to actually taste my food and not have burning lips for the next hour, and then shit fire later that evening. Maybe im just a wuss :P Franks red hot is amazing though, “I put that shit on everything”

Horse radish and wasabi on the other hand are great. Gives that nice effect, clears you out, and then done.

I’m as picky with my hot sauce as I am with BBQ (It’s Sweet Baby Ray’s or nothing!).

Franks and sriracha are the shit.

@jonsblond Lurve for the Sweet Baby Ray’s. That’s the best BBQ sauce ever!

I don’t do spicy food. At all. Can’t even eat pepperjack cheese!

Only in the last couple of years have I been able to tolerate even the medium salsa at Chipotle, so I’m going to have to go with “Can’t handle the heat.” ::leaves kitchen::

@Likeradar No Pepperjack? That may be the saddest story I’ve ever heard. I’m gonna eat double pepperjack from now on, just for you. (Ok, mostly for me).

Has anyone found a decent frozen jalapeño popper?

Every one I have tried is just too mild for me.

Spicy is good.. but at some point you have to turn it down and actually taste what you’re eating.

I visited Jamaica in 88 and bit into a Habanero by accident. WWWWWWWWWWWWow!!!

My wife says I am hot,hot, hot, so I guess I can handle it. But my kids think I am cool, at least sometimes so it depends on who you ask.

I love spicy food as long as it still tastes like something other than soap. When it gets to that soap flavor you are actually doing damage to your taste buds.

My favorites vary with the dish, but we always have to have sriracha, Tabasco, Yucatan Sunshine, and Bufalo Chipotle sauce in the pantry. And nachos don’t exist if they don’t include pickle jalapenos.

I am OK if it burns my tongue. I am OK if it makes my eyes water. I am not OK if it melts my earwax.

@Darwin

“Soap flavor”? I’ve never heard of that before. I don’t know if I want to induce it, though…

@DominicX – My husband first ran into the “soap flavor” one time in North Africa. That is way too hot.

This has an interesting account of how the hotness in peppers actually works. Capsaicin at high enough concentration can prevent nerves from sending messages and can even destroy cells.

But the endorphins make up for it all.

For some reason eating over spiced food always reminds me of my ketchup period as a kid when I wanted to put ketchup on everything. It didn’t really make sense to anyone, but for me it was heaven (and luckily it didn’t last long). I never knew about the endorphins @darwin mentioned, so maybe that requires a different perspective from me.

That’s a great article, @Darwin! Since a lot of people have been talking about cold water as a solution, I wanted to point out how wrong that idea is. But here’s the paragraph explaining what will work:

Capsaicin is insoluble in cold water, but freely soluble in alcohol and vegetable oils. This is why drinking water after munching an habanero pepper won’t stop the burning. A cold beer is the traditional remedy, but the small percentage of alcohol will not wash away much capsaicin. For relief from a chile burn, drink milk. Milk contains casein, a lipophilic (fat-loving) substance that surrounds and washes away the fatty capsaicin molecules in much the same way that soap washes away grease.

I was also very interested in the following sentence: Capsaicin prevents nerve cells from communicating with each other by blocking the production of certain neurotransmitters; at high concentrations it destroys the cells!

I wonder if one of the reasons I became susceptible to a disorder that messes with neurotransmitters is because I had stopped consuming capsaicin-infused items as much as I had before. My family is not that into them, and find things that I think are very mild to be quite hot.

Anyway, I’m not into Habaneros, or Asian chiles. My favorite is the Poblano, which can range between 3 and 8 on the hotness scale. I love it’s flavor. A lot of chiles only have hotness, but no flavor. Poblano has both.

I’m not into hotness for machismo’s sake, and I don’t understand these chile eating contests. Once, at a restaurant in the Caribbean, we sat outside next to a Scotch Bonnet bush. We were warned not to touch them, as they would burn right through our skin. I had always thought that Habaneros and Scotch Bonnets were the hottest peppers until I read that article of Darwin’s.

However, I have gotten hot stuff all over my fingers and then forgotten, and rubbed my eyes, or had to pee, and I was pretty unhappy after that. I’ve learned to wash my hands very carefully after handling peppers, and to not rub my eyes or go to the bathroom before I’ve washed my hands with a lot a lot of soap!

For me it isn’t really about the heat of the pepper. It’s more about the flavor of the pepper or of the sauce made from it.

Poblanos (also called Pasillas) are indeed very tasty peppers and make great Chiles Rellenos. I especially like to use them dried in dishes, in which form they are called Anchos. I also like to use the Mulato pepper, which is closely related to the Poblano but slightly sweeter and also used dry, and which is essential to molé. They are all forms of Capsicum annuum as are the non-spicy Bell peppers, which I also love (red Bell peppers and zucchini sauteed in a bit of olive oil with a touch of salt, yum!).

I do like the flavor of Habanero peppers, although sometimes they are a bit hot. Habaneros and Scotch Bonnets (way too hot for me!) are both Capsicum chinensis. The spice called ají dulce that is vital in certain Venezuelan dishes comes from this same species.

Capsicum frutescens gives rise to the peppers used in Tabasco as well as in Thai dishes. It, too, has a good flavor.

And then Capsicum baccatum is the pepper that is the source of ají as used in Chilean dishes. My father grew up in Chile and we often miss being able to find ají to make Chilean dishes such as Pastél de Choclo. A mix of sweet paprika and a touch of cayenne can serve as a substitute.

I haven’t had much to do with the last pepper type, Capsicum pubescens. It is hot like the others above but fleshy like a Bell pepper, and is popular in Peru.

I am blond and have blandish taste buds. Over time my Scoville tolerance index has increased marginally, but only to the week level of “Anaheim-Numex Jo Parker” fully ripe. I love them, preferably hot, then grilled, filleted with salt and lime juice

@Garebo

lol…what does being blond have to do with taste buds?

Where I live it is a cultural or regional joke, if you are blond, you have bland taste buds.

Hmm. Never heard that one before. I’m blond and have anything but bland taste buds. :(

Oh, and I’m also not dumb. :P

@Darwin in my experience that soap taste is caused by hot sauce made with pepper extract. Adding pepper extract to a hot sauce is like adding a turbo to a Volvo. effing stupid and unneccesary. Hot sauce should be able to stand on its own using just natural peppers and spices. I like it hot, but without flavor, what’s the point?

I have a scale of 1 to 10 that I use to describe hot sauces, salsas and hot food. 1 is basically ketchup and 10 is ‘so damn hot you want to rip out your tongue and stomp on it to put the fire out.’

My favorite hot sauces are this, this, and this. None of them are above an 8.

@evelyns_pet_zebra – I like this one, this one, this one, this one and this one, which is absolutely scrumptious, sweet and smokey and sour all at once.

I also love a number of different salsas, which to me means they are chunky, as opposed to liquid. Some of my absolute favorites are ones produced by these people. My favorite green salsa is this one.

However, there are always new salsas to try.

I’ve never met a spice lover who didn’t love Sriracha. Except for jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities.

I find that for me, it’s not so much about how hot the spice is, and more about the flavor. This is why I dislike most hot sauces and would rather just dump cayenne pepper into a meal. I love the flavor of Sriracha, but sometimes it’s too hot for me; I use it in small doses.

I might catch a lot of heat for this, but I kinda wish they made a slightly milder version of Sriracha so I could use more of it on my food.