Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

My path to becoming a chilehead started way back in middle and high school. I liked salsa with my chips and I liked how it tingled. Heck at first when I started to use Tabasco sauce, I was a little frightened by the heat of that. But it created a stir in me that wanted more and more heat.

I had a friend around the corner whose grandmother was Jamaican and I learned about rice and peas and scotch bonnet peppers with chicken and anything jerk. I tried new salsas and would eat the occasional raw, sliced jalapeno.

Then after college, what really got me going was an accident. I was searching for a website for the Red Hot Chili Peppers (the band) and I stumbled onto www.peppers.com and I found heaven. A place in Dewey Beach, DE that carried over 1000 types of hot sauce, salsa, bbq sauce, rubs, you name it. I started ordering bottles upon bottles of hot sauce, just by the name alone. The odder the better. Smack My Ass and Call Me Sally Habanero sauce became one of my favorites.

To this day, I still love my heat, my wife will even tell you, If I don't sweat, It's not good.

i'm a pretty big weenie when it comes to hot stuff, altho as i've gotten older i've been able to take on more and more heat. i actually made those jalapeno poppers that were recently posted. i scraped out all the seeds and most of the membrane to insure they weren't crazy hot, but they definitely had a nice zip. my boyfriend's a much bigger chilehead than i & really dug them, although i think he would've liked them even hotter. it's a process for me. i don't think i'll ever be a full on chilehead, but i'm getting there. however, i absolutely enjoy the names of those hot sauces dozertx mentioned!

I'm Korean, so I grew up eating kimchi by the pound, and i did slowly train my boyfriend at the time to eat all kinds of spicy things, in the beginning he would whine and moan about how it was too spicy but eventually, he got used to it, i like very very spicy things, habaneros are my best friends, i try to sneak them in, my father eats hot peppers raw seeds and all dipped in daenjang, he likes it, i like that mouth on fire feeling, it's cool and i heart siracha, it has the perfect blend of heat and flavor.

My family's always liked food a little spicy - plenty of crushed red pepper on pizza and pasta, for example. But given that dinner was usually low-effort fare like broiled sole and steamed broccoli, we didn't really grow up on high spice. I think it was the weekly Sunday dinners at the Indian restaurant and then using Tabasco sauce to get through four years of very repetitive dining hall food that really boosted my tolerance for spice. Now I regularly make things that most people (including my spice-loving partner) find intolerably spicy. Which if I were a nicer person I would probably not do as often.

for most of my life, i couldn't tolerate heat. then last summer my friend (also a former no-heat girl) and i spent seven weeks in thailand, where the chilis are hot and ubiquitous, so rather than fight the movement, i gave in. the first phrase we learned in thai was "phet ma!" or "very spicy," which quite amused our hosts every time we would gasp the phrase and gulp down water. midway through our trip, we noticed that we were now dousing everything from phat thai to pizza in chili flakes. the chili back here in the states no longer cuts it for me. the hotter the better!

Born and raised in New Mexico, there is no escaping chili. I grew up eating it- red and green- and miss having it around all the time. I live far away now and having Hatch chili roasted at my local store is out of the question. But when we go back for a visit, its all I eat! And weird thing is, I can tolerate hotter chili now that I don't eat it all the time. It could be that I just don't care how hot it is. It's just too darn good to not eat it. And who knows when I'll get it next.

My mom used to bring home spicy take out from a local Chinese place. She'd let me try a little. My mouth would burn for hours, but I liked it. When I was a teenager, a Thai restaurant opened about 45 minutes away. My family quickly was hooked on spicy curries and basil stir fries.

One of the first Chinese dishes I learned to make was kung pao chicken. I gradually starting adding increasing numbers of dried chiles to the dish. It's a go to "pick me up" dish still because of the adrenaline buzz I get from eating the dried chiles.

My journey must have been at least partially genetic. My father's idea of salad dressing is mayo + hot sauce, and my 93-year old maternal grandmother eats jalapenos every day like they're candy (she also loves her Coors Light - bless her heart!)

Cute story Andrea;
I think I realized I was a true chilihead when I would bring the jar of chilipowder to the supper table and add it to my bowl of chili. I must have been aroud 7 y/o-ish.

I crave spicy foods every single day.
I do like my heat in moderation though...I want to taste the other flavours.

I just started dating a guy and I took him out for some beers for his birthday...I ordered some nachos with extra jals and cheese...I noticed throughout the evenings' conversation that he was picking all the toppings off....I really really hope he's not a bland eater. And if so: how should I break him in? He seems open-minded overall but perhaps just hasn't been exposed to a real foodie lifestyle!

Um...I'm Mexican and Filipino, so it wasn't really an option growing up. You either ate spicy food as is, or you went hungry!

My Mexican dad drinks taco shop hot sauce cups like little shots because he can't be bothered to pour it on his burrito. I've even heard my Filipino grandmother exclaim, a la Marilyn Monroe, "I like it hot, baby!" while adding another chile to a pot of stew!

My Sicilian husband also likes spicing up food in any way possible, so we have several different sources of heat on hand at all times -- from hot sauces like Sriracha and Tapatio to red chile flakes to spicy mustards, we've got it covered!

I grew up in Chicago. Spice for us was the little shaker of red pepper flakes at the local pizza joint. I fell in love with Thai and Tex/Mex food, and built up a love of spice.

Then I moved to the UK. And I have very little spice tolerance at all anymore. I can manage a Madras curry, but not a Vindaloo. And, when working at a reastaurant run by a Salvadorian chef, I made the mistake of asking for something 'extra hot'. I had hiccoughs for a week. Apparently, he regarded it as a personal challenge. And he won.

I love chiles, but I don't want them to mask the flavours underneath. You need to know just how much to add to a dish; to give it added flavour and kick, but not burn the tongue. I'm sure you all know this, but the current leading theory on why we like spicy food is that the pain triggers endorphins, which make us feel better. That's right; chiles really are a drug.

My boyfriend's family is Indian. They start them young. I once visited his cousins and they had twin girls that were 2 years old. They were eating some spicy food and they didn't even bat an eye. I, on the other hand, was crying and blowing my nose through the whole meal.

However, the downfall is that they thought all non-spicy food as bland. In fact, they thought Chinese food wasn't tasty enough. Too bad for them.

Although I can't handle the heat, I'd rather be able to taste the subtleties in food.

It was like someone just flipped a switch in my tongue one day. As a child, I made my parents order all food mild, refused to use mint toothpaste because it was too "burny", and wouldn't eat an altoid or spicy salsa if you paid me.

About 3 years ago, I was eating some salsa at a Mexican restaurant and I realized I wanted it to be hotter. It was crazy. I started ordering my food medium, then hot, and now I literally crave hot food. I feel like a crazy pregnant woman, insisting to all my servers that when I say hot I mean HOT! Don't just dial down the heat because I'm a gringa, I want it native!! Now I make pretty much everything spicy, but it sometimes gets me in trouble with dinner guests who are not chileheads.

I've always loved spicy food but 17 years in the Caribbean have turned the love into something of an addiction. My daughter, now 11, was raised on scotch bonnets - no need for any kind of slow indoctrination. It's just what we eat at home.

My mum told me: 'You can't call yourself Malay if you can't stand the heat of chilies.'

I guess I was born into it :). Both of my parents originally came from Manado (North Sulawesi), a region in Indonesia well-known for its spicy, hot dishes loaded with herbs, aromatics and LOADS of chilies. Even some of the 'snack' dishes are spicy! There are also many variations of homemade sambals to accompany every meal.

Though I was born and grew up in a different city in Indonesia, Manadonese dishes were often part of the family meals. When I moved to the U.S. as a teen, the food I grew up with became a scarce commodity, but when there's a will, there's always a way! I don't remember a time when I didn't like hot, spicy food, even as a kid.

Continuing the legacy, my two young sons are growing up eating spicy foods. My youngest, a few months shy of turning 3, would specifically ask for something hot: so I'd dab some Sambal Lampung (Indonesian version of Sriracha, and yes, it's hot!) on his plate. He'd sometimes cry from the heat, but that never stopped him from coming back for more!