My side of the family, specially from dad’s, has been cursed with having sensitive stomachs. I was the lucky bastard for many years and I could eat hot food and chase it with the darkest of espressos without even hiccupping.
Venezuelans love a good hot sauce. You will find a grungy-looking bottle of what you know is a home-made concoction in any street vendor and it will be used with delight by the customers. But truthfully since it was forbidden at home, I never cared for how it was made and never even heard of Aji Chirel, , just that it was available when I ate “perros calientes” (hot dogs) late at night at my favorite street peddler.
On the other side of the scale is the “aji dulce” which is any small pepper that has zero heat in it, but is loaded with flavor and it is used in all kinds of preparations. It tastes different that your red bell pepper but you can tell they are from the same family as the hot branch.
I know, it is a long intro, but bear with me. While I was in college in the USA, mom had gotten some seeds of what was supposed to be aji dulce. Unfortunately, it was the seeds for the 120.000 SHU mini grenades which grew beautifully by her hand but could not use. Rather than being practical and getting rid of the plants, she gave all but one away because “It was always producing pretty peppers and it looked beautiful.”
Now, I don’t mind pretty plants and I will enjoy the look of a fruitful bush like any other human, but please inform me that we have mother nature’s chemical weapon dispenser in our backyard and I am supposed to be no closer than 5 feet from the fiery green I should have known something was weird because I saw the dogs avoiding the heck out of the plant, but my brain did not process the information.
One day back home for a brief vacation, mom asked me to water her plants in her side garden, the small one. Again, mom being green-thumb-mom, this task regularly took about 40 minutes because her definition of “small garden” was understated as hell. One of the things you do when watering is to check for bugs and sicknesses and that implies touching and examining up close. So I did… to the frigging aji chirel. I just did not touch it but gave it an examination worth medical school.
Then my right eye itched a bit and I rubbed it with my unwashed hand.
Medieval and Chinese tortures are lame. The Inquisition was a pussy. Napalm? pshhhht! just a slight sunburn.
It hurt. Oh my God it hurt. The burn was like somebody had lit a Bunsen burner inside my eye and sprinkled it with Pompeii’s lava. So I did what any normal idiot human being would do: I rubbed twice as hard with my both my hands, managing to share the same effect on the left eye and my cheeks start to feel as if I laid my face on a hot grill.
The streaming of cursing coming out of my mouth in three languages was one for the ages. I was told neighbors heard the multilingual demonstration 2 blocks away and more than one abuela clutched her rosary and started to mutter Hail Marys like a machine gun. I swear at one moment I could feel my eyeballs rotate at high speed inside my skull and my brain just simply shut down any higher level of consciousness and rationality.
I heard mom coming and I guess he figured out what happened because she asked why the heck did she raise a stupid child who went on to play make-up with God’s Burning Bush. She warned me to, sit on the ground, stop touching my face and that she would be right back. I did so and felt something falling/dripping on my lap. I touched and it felt ugly and sticky, was I losing ectoplasm? Dear God! Am I gonna die here? (Later I found out it was just plain snot which I produced in amazing quantities)
Mom came back with milk which did nothing but provide me with a millisecond of relief. Then she went straight to the hose and sprayed me constantly which seemed to help better even if I almost drowned, but at that moment I really did not care, the pain subsided all of a 3% and I was happy about it.
The pain eventually subsided to “WWII Japanese bunker cleared by flamethrower” level and my brain once again re-engaged. I washed my hands with gasoline, then detergent and the I put on some surgical gloves on instructions from mom. It took me till the next day to regain my facial functions and normal vision, but the nightmares remain till this day.
I went back to school and on my next vacation, I saw that the plant was gone. I asked about it and all I got were a truly evil stare from dad and mom giving him a twice worse stare. I decided not to push the subject.
I know I should take pepper spray training, but if anybody asks if I ever had a taste of OC, I can proudly (and mostly stupidly) say yes.
I used to cook a lot of Thai food at school, and had a pretty quick but tasty fried rice recipe I made on a regular basis. One day, someone had left a box of humble jalapeno peppers in the spot reserved for other free excess garden windfalls. I thought that subbing the mild and unobtrusive jalapeno for the usual green bell peppers would be a flavorful change from the normal.
I had my wok hot, and added the diced peppers- and was tear gassed out of my apartment. I could hardly eat the end result.
Two stories here:
1) The story about grungy bottles of hot sauce made me think of the little Colombian place I frequented with coworkers down in Miami Gardens when I worked there. The hot sauce came out in a little dish and 2-3 little wooden spoons for you to season the dish to your taste. Amazing, delicious sauce but too much on your bandeja paisa would lead to . . . consequences. I imagine in quantity it could have been used to strip anodizing off of aluminum. Fun times.
2) Your misfortune reminds me of a coworker who had similar exploit at a bar. We were having a bit of a happy hour and got some nachos, fresh jalapeños on the side. He and I were eating them (no one else was a fan). As things go at a bar, he went to use the facilities. A few minutes go by and he returns with a pained look on his face. Inquiring minds want to know. Coworker says, “Guys. I made a big mistake. I forgot to wash my hands before I peed. I’m gonna need a minute.” That happened once again that night to the same coworker.
Two stories of hot peppers and/or sauces.
When I was a University, there was a little hole in the wall Mexican restaurant. Literally, a hole in the wall, A doorway at street level leading to the the basement. There was almost always a line to get in.
A friend and I had been doing some Kendo practice and afterwards wanted to go for dinner/lunch and I convinced him to go to this Mexican place. He ordered something very mild as he didn’t do spicy. I ordered my normally, a burrito with green sauce with a side of green sauce.
Now the way I ate my burritos was to take a spoonful of green sauce, ladle it onto the open side and take a couple of bits till the sauce was gone. Then add another spoonful or more. YUMMY.
Well my friend didn’t understand that “green” meant “hot” in this case and was watching me chow down and asked “Can I try some of the green sauce.”
I nodded and mumbled “sure” through a mouth of yummy hot burrito.
And before I could react, my friend reach out with his spoon, took a fair mount of the green sauce and stuck it in his mouth….
About 15 seconds later his eyes popped open and a small scream came out. He grabbed his water and downed it. He grabbed my water glass and downed it. He’s panting and like a good friend I’m helping out by laughing like a fiend.
His mouth is open and he’s waving his hands at his mouth trying to cool it a little, he reaches out as a waitress passes, grabs the pitcher of water from her tray and downs about half of that. I finally get my laughing enough under control to order some milk for him from the waitress. She moved rapidly.
It was only after things had calmed down a little did he inform me that I was an ass for not warning him ho hot it was.
The “green” sauce was chopped Jalapeno peppers with enough “stuff” to call it a sauce rather than a relish/chopped peppers. And this was before they turned Jalapeno’s into a joke not much hotter than a bell pepper.
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Story the second. I like to cook. I use to make my own spaghetti meat sauce and one of the things I would add was a can of Jalapeno relish to the sauce. Mostly because it was hard to get fresh Jalapeno’s where I lived. When I was shopping they didn’t have my normal brand so I got a different brand. Made my meat sauce like normal.
Served it to guests for dinner that night. They ended up not eating more than a mouth full. Seems that these were Jalapeno’s imported from Mexico and were about 10 times spicier than the ones I normally used. Not what they were expecting. I loved them, them, not so much
” I use to make my own spaghetti meat sauce and one of the things I would add was a can of Jalapeno relish to the sauce. ”
You should be tried for crimes against Humanity 😀
I had a coworker who grew Carolina Reapers. He brought some in. Another coworker ate one on a dare. He had to go home sick an hour later due to uncontrollable fire-shits.
About 25 years and two jobs ago, a bunch of us at work banded together to mail-order a bunch of pounds of savina peppers, back when those first appeared. That’s a mutant habanero, about 50% hotter than the regular one and red instead of orange. Most of us treated them with great care, but one of my co-workers just reached into his bag, pulled out one, and popped it into his mouth.
I like habanero pepper flakes on pizza (and even ghost pepper, with care), but that’s a bit crazy for me.
Some years earlier I was in LA with my parents, and we went to a sushi restaurant. At some point in the middle of the meal my father started making strange noises. A few minutes later he recovered enough to explain — he had taken that clump of green stuff and ate it. No, that’s not a food item, that’s the wasabi. 🙂
A story and a bit of chemistry….:
1. Two fraternity brothers at college would sit with a #10 can of japenos between them on the table. Each would eat one. Each would eat another. They continued until one quit. The rest of us looked at it as a sort of warped version of who could drink the other under the table. One was a Jewish guy from LA, with, as far as we knew, Eastern European ancestry, but who really liked hot food. The other was a guy from Phoenix, AZ, whose parents were immgrants from Mexico. Yes, others might see it as strange behavior, but, bear in mind that we were all students at MIT, so much of what we did for amusement would be seen by others as strange behavior….
2. If you eat spicy foods regularly, you’re probably aware of this, but your friends (or frenemies) might not be… The spicy elements in foods are generally fat soluble, not water soluble, so drinking water isn’t going to get the taste out of your mouth. You need milk (or, better yet, buttermilk or cream), or you need something else that has some ability to dissolve fats, like, say, something with ethanol in it. So, milk and/or beer can be your friends here. Alternatively, you can try eating bread, which might remove the spicy elements abrasively. YMMV, of course.
Hot tea or coffee also helps.
You’re all machoish idgits.
Fun fact: peppers are notoriously promiscuous. Planting your bell peppers next to your habaneros can lead to some interesting cross-pollination.
I’m kind of a middleweight when it comes to hot stuff. I can generally shrug off the lighter sauces, but my max seems to cap out around 70,000 scovilles. I am very fond of buffalo chicken, and have an intense desire to try vindaloo at some point.
This is the mild sauce we use in the household: https://store.davesgourmet.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=DAIN, sort of a mundane 180,000 Scoville units, This was my son’s Christmas gift to me: https://www.vat19.com/item/worlds-hottest-chocolate-bar at 9,000,000 Scoville units.
We were going to have a fund raiser before the CCP Virus hit. For the VFW. Chocolate chip cookies. We promise that at least ONE of the cookies would be of the “hot chocolate” style. Sell the cookies for $2 each or 3 for $5. 8 oz glass of milk $10 if you prepay, $20 if after you eat your cookie.
We were talking to some friends, you want to talk about evil? The WIVES and GFs were the ones that were going to be buying for their men.
Ever shop at the Heatonist? 🙂
I visited the Tabasco factory in Louisiana last year and as you know their usual sauce is at the low end of heat.
They make a number of lesser known items like jellies and a Raspberry Tabasco flavor sauce.
At the obligatory gift shop they had Tabasco soft serve Ice Cream which came in handy after tasting the lesser known Ghost Pepper sauce.
I dipped a toothpick into it and just to wet it and chewed the end for a moment.
It’s and interesting feeling to get enthusiastic hiccups while your chest locks up so you can’t breathe.