Wow...I never googled the Prince of Wales pub before. Turns out they consume 100 lbs of habaneros per year.

Peppers of all sorts are amazingly easy to raise and to cross-breed. I have an agronomist friend who collects the seeds from raw peppers all over the world, plants them in February in little yogurt cups under good lights, and then transplants them during our warm season (which ain't long in Nova Scotia). He cross-pollinates them when they flower.

He often gives me some babies and I plant them in the sawed off bottom of a barrel about 3 feet in diameter. Because I don't recognize them on sight, I'm always in for a surprise on my burgers - might blow my face off, might be like an ordinary green pepper - after they've been cross-bred, you don't know what they'll taste like, but to me, it's always good. I cross-fertilize them too - easy to do with a Q-tip. If you're a peppers nut, it's a fun but not demanding hobby, and unless you like to eat the seeds, you can save them for next season and see what you got.

You're much braver than I am! That would be a fun thing to buy at the store though. The 'mystery bag' of peppers. It would be good for parties too...

If you don't like to taste them to find out (I just touch my tongue to them), rubbing a drop of juice on inside of your arm will warn you. If it's a barn burner, rub some butter or oil on it, wait a few minutes, and wash it off. Similarly, if you do get a super hot one in your chops, a teaspoon of olive oil sloshed around will absorb the burn I'm told - I just tough it out.

i came to realise early on in life, that i think i like food that hurts me.

its never hot enough for me, and when its just plain stupid hot, i tend to grin through the pain, like some kind of insane fix.

other culprits in tantalising my taste buds, either 3 bags of salt & vinigar "discos" or 3 bags of pickled onion "monster munch" in a row, the toungue then swells to twice its normal size and "ahhhhhhhhhhhhh"

you cant teach it, you can only learn from it.

was discussing this thread last night (over a chilli!) and it had been pointed out that i have always had slight nasal problems, blocked adenoids, and not the sharpest sense of smell due to some slight damage in me membranes.
and others concluded that this may explain why i have a high capacity for spices etc. we discussed how, if you pinch your nose real tight, you almost have no sence of taste, and can pretty much withstand anything.

are there any other hot heads out there, that have any issues with their nose etc? that they can identify with this?

or am i just a chilli pervert looking for excuses?

occasionally the mere mention of chillies/jalapenos/habarneros etc makes me salivate wildly. there is a lot of speculation about their addictive qualities, but i have read nothing concrete, only that they can release your dopamine stash.

you know things are bad, when you find your self munchywunching them raw. i'll be burgling my grandmother next.

oh and another thing... bad breath?? never! onions maybe, but chillies have never caused such a problem for me.

my profanisaurus has an entry about the after effects of chilli bindging warning that you could end up "with an ass like the japanese flag"

I have mild nasal allergies, which peppers help clean out. But I can taste subtle things too, so I don't think that's related to the pepper tolerance. I can taste something and then pretty well re-create it in my own kitchen.

Speaking of medicine and peppers...I once cleared out a case of strep with my favorite hot wings. The first one burned like hell, but after that I felt great. Next day my throat was fine.

How do you go about gaining an ability like that? I can never recreate the taste of something. I can do that with music, is it anything like that?

I suppose I should mention, in reference to missbehive, that I usually have onions on my chili too. Walla walla onions to be precise. Good stuff... I really need to have some chili with friend onions though...maybe I'll go try that.

I don't know how to gain it, guess I always had that ability. Or at least, after using a spice, I could later identify it in other foods. I can't decode music though, to I guess it's that sort of thing.

In the more than you wanted to know category:

Capsecum, the chemical that causes the "burn" is not actually doing any damage at all. Turns out it fakes out the nerve endings that sense heat, and there's a limit to what they can deal with. Burn victims are sometimes anesthetized and sprayed with capsecum which blows out their heat sensors. When they wake up, the pain is less intense. Works for strep throat too, I guess. I know a guy who puts half a bottle of tabasco sauce on scrambled eggs.

Bottom line: you get used to it. It doesn't reduce your ability to taste - it reduces your ability to sense heat and by extension, to sense capsecum.

More trivia... I always wondered why I would get a quicker, stronger "buzz" when eating wings while drinking beer. Turns out that the effect you describe also causes the body to produce lots of endorphines to kill the pain, which break down into essentially morphine in the blood.

yup those endorphines are called dopamine, got pretty obbsessed with the word about a year ago,
its our own built in ecstacy, even laughing can trigger it.

been writing a preoject for the past year called "diary of a dopamine fiend"
its a bit of a psychotic journal of a chap, who basically treats it like a drug habit, and meters his levels through every action and pleasure he takes, its a pretty immoral tale, but a fascinating subject.


carlos, i'm with you on the resteraunt thing, i do exactly the same.

i think you could gain it as a skill, its basically just switching your brain on and connecting them to your tastebuds when you take a mouthfull.
and obviously a good knowledge in "the science" of cooking and knowing what each flavour is and how they work with eachother.

my fave result in doing this, was in a north indian resteraunt in glasgow (candleriggs if there is anyone there, highly recomended)
i had a dish called saag paneer, and it was heaven!
spinach based curry, with lumps of paneer cheese laced in single cream.
next day at home, i was in "the lab" like a crazed madman, and i think i better'd the instruction. saag panner is now one of my signature dishes,
a very simple one also, i've written the recipe down for a couple of friends and am willing to share it if anyone is interested.

and yeah music production is the same kick i reckon, there is a fine line between swirling your taste buds in a resteraunt, and stripping down a well produced track and isolating each flavour. nice comparison.

not a vodka drinker, but....chilli vodka and ice! mmmmm

easy to make also, stick a couple of dried chillies of your taste into a bottle, stick it in the freezer for a couple of months shaking it intermittantly. tasty stuff indeed.

Well, living in Bangkok is about as good as it gets for chillied foods, even if the traffic drives me senseless. The majority of the food served in the Capital is central/north eastern (Issan) type and can be quite intense if you are not used to it. The very strong smells put a lot of visitors off. The previous posters are quite correct though, in that initially mind-blowing levels of chilli become quite normal - a bit like booze and tobacco. In the deep south, where I spend half my time, there are some foods that are legendary in terms of their spice levels, although I think that is more myth than reality. Or am I just used to it?

If you ever get here, try the "Raw Prawns in Fish Sauce with Garlic & Chillies".

They are not really raw, as they are cooked by lemon juice but it's great beer drinking food. That said, the beer here is generally crap but much better than we had in the eighties.

Good for people doing Atkins too. How about deep fried prawns in garlic, served with swamp cabbage flash-fried in oyster sauce with chillies? That was my lunch anyway, even if the day did end with fried turkey - long story, it was someone's birthday party.....

Cheers

Gavin

Ghost chile anyone?

I remember on top gear they had that, apparently you have to touch it with gloves, and you dont chop it up and add it to food, you just rub it gently against it.

But to answer your question, a breath mint

Cross-pollinated peppers are really interesting. I have a colleague who is an agronomist. He travels a lot to India, the Middle East and Africa on his researches. Wherever he goes, he buys local hot peppers in the markets, tastes them and if he likes them, strips the seeds out and brings them back to Canada.

In his basement are a bunch of grow lights (looks like he's raising weed) hanging above trestle tables and around February, there are hundreds of little plastic containers holding sprouting pepper seeds. Around June, he transplants them to a sunny garden, cross pollinates their flowers and carefully saves the seeds as he tastes their progeny. A few years ago, he gave me about 25 plants which I raised per instructions, allowing them to pollinate naturally (bees seemed to like them and I wondered about the honey).

As they ripened, my burgers took on a full spectrum of flavors, for the most part totally unpredictable. Great fun, though, and a culinary experience. Highly recommended hobby.

I have heard that adding carrots to a gassy dish will lower the gas backlash. I think the degassing product "Beano" uses Asparagus extract.

As for making them "taste better", you need some kind of base to neutralize the acid. Try a carbonated drink. It may increase the burbs, but the carbonation will neutralize the acid. I would prefer an A&W Root Beer from the tap (seeing I don't drink).

Also, try having chili on top of pasta, garnished heavily with Cilantro. Give it a try, I have come to love it that way. You still enjoy the chili, but the pasta limits your intake, and I believe the Cilantro (as well as giving it a great new taste) helps neutralize the gas effect. Not sure on that one, though.

Here is an alternative to onions and garlic that is also supposed to reduce bodily gases;

Asafoetida

I laughed so hard when I read this topic, I almost died of suffocation.

As far as spicy goes, I'm weak. Hopefully the Mexican girlfriend I have will fix that.

Take it slow, Anti, take it slow. Being in SoCal, I can get some pretty good Mexican food, and you will never regret getting used to it. But take it slow and give your taste buds time to acclimate.

fazstp, are you seriously suggesting we replace onions and garlic with devil's dung? ;)