PrintHot & Spicy
Hot chili's, blackened, hotter than hell sauce - can you really taste the food? One bite and my lips are blistered my tongue goes from fire to numb and my throat has an automatic closing door to protect my poor tummy. Is it an acquired taste? I've heard that people who live in hotter climates eat hot food to sweat and cool off the body. Does my northern European ancestry keep me from being able to taste and appreciate hot & spicy? Am I alone here? I feel like I'm missing out!
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20 Comments:
some hot sauces are just hot with no taste, others are tasty but lack real kick, it is somewhat difficult to find a good in-between that works for you. i like sriracha because it has a nice garlicky flavor and a little kick, very good with eggs or curry. if you can find them, fruit based hot sauces are very good. try asian (especially korean or thai) style hot sauces, they usually have more flavor than their american counterparts.
protest at 12:00PM on 04/04/08
Cholula!
Soup_Dumpling at 12:05PM on 04/04/08
I'm with you, PerkyMac--with both the pain of hot sauce, and the Northern European ancestry :-)
Vegetarianka at 12:08PM on 04/04/08
I LOVE spicy foods...anything from buffalo sauce (and lots of it) to spicy Chinese or Thai food to spicy Mediterranean dips to putting lots and lots of spicy red pepper flakes on my pizza. It's almost like the spiciness is the flavor, but I like it that way. It makes you drink a lot of water and just feels like it's cleansing you or something. Not sure if this helps...
Hillary
Chew on That
Chew on That at 12:29PM on 04/04/08
Despite the Scottish ancestry, I love spicy food. Most of the time, I prefer a level of heat that, like protest mentions, packs heat and flavor. I think that balance is different for everyone.
I love the different types of heat. My favorite kind is the heat that builds slowly as you eat, so you're practically sweating at the end of a meal. My least favorite (although I still enjoy it) is the wasabi heat that hits right away in my sinuses.
Periodically, hubby and I get something that is clearly too hot for either of us. Then it doubles as dinner and entertainment.
I have at least three different types of hot sauce in the fridge right now.
blackolive at 12:29PM on 04/04/08
I'm of eastern European descent, but to me, anything good is better with chili sauce! Like protest, I absolutely love Sriracha, "the rooster sauce." There's always a big bottle in our fridge. I also like some of the Tabasco flavored sauces, like the chipotle and the habanero.
CookiePie at 12:29PM on 04/04/08
OOOH -- Hillary -- I forgot about the buffalo sauce! I don't even like chicken that much (I know, I know), but if it's got buffalo sauce on it, I'm ALL over it!
CookiePie at 12:36PM on 04/04/08
It's like any other seasoning or condiment - overused, a hot sauce or chile pepper will dominate the overall flavor of the dish, particularly for the palates of those who do not like or are unaccustomed to spicy/hot foods.
That being said, I'm a complete chilehead and love hot sauce and chile peppers in just about everything. I've even made a simple syrup infused with habaneros and poured it over sorbet!
Amandarama at 1:17PM on 04/04/08
I had a cocktail made with habanero simple syrup & peach vodka. I don't recall what else but it was incredible! (possibly club soda?)
I'm from a mixd batch of euro ethnicities- and most of the time I love spicy with no ill effects, I have a tincan stomach- unlike my BF who LOVES spicy but it doesn't love him.
bisbee at 1:26PM on 04/04/08
I don't think it's an ethnicity thing PerkyMac. I'm pretty much entirely a euromutt of the very whitest kind (Swedish/German/Dutch/Russian) and I love really spicy food. Maybe it's what you grow up with? Because I definitely grew up with spicy. I don't like hot for its own sake, it's got to have actual flavor. I do find though, and this is kind of weird, but for some bizarre reason, hot and spicy Thai food affects me a more than any other kind. I can eat most things as amped up as you can get them, but Thai? - I can only hit maybe moderately spicy.
There was this awesome soda available at Gourmet Garage in NYC a few years ago that was spicy and flavored with jalepeno. Just delicious stuff. Does anyone know the soda I'm talking about and if so, what its name was? It's been bugging me for months.
chisai at 2:28PM on 04/04/08
I second Cholula! Great flavor decent heat, not over the top. If I ate really hot & spicy foods (even being a "spice" girl) my head produces a flood of water and it ruins my coiff! Can't have that.
crazyspice at 2:47PM on 04/04/08
You know what, I never could eat very spicy food- a little spicy, OK, but not really spicy- and then I spent about a week in Chengdu (China), in the super spicy Sichuan province. They are famous for their food, especially street foods, but ALL of the food there is filled with loads of hot peppers. At first it was pretty painful but then I started enjoying the food more.
When we got to our next stop, in NE China where there is a lot of Russian-influenced food... there I was throwing hot chilies on everything! It tasted so boring after I got used to the spice! So I think you can get used to it... maybe a trip to China or India is in order for you if you want to become a spice lover :)
(You can check out pictures and descriptions of the Chengdu eats in a 2-part blog post: Part 1 and Part 2.)
karenita at 3:42PM on 04/04/08
Third for Cholula, I love the stuff. It has a very good flavor and sane heat level, so I can add more and enjoy the taste of it before I start sniffling. Not a fan of Tabasco, as I find it too vinegary.
I am newly discovering Sriracha, and probably use a ton of it in large part due to the ton of it that I have. It's interesting to compare side by side with Cholula. The garlic in Sriracha can be a little too strong in some instances, and while I like it, I think I still prefer the Cholula.
renzata at 3:48PM on 04/04/08
I love spicy food, I actually just finished a big bowl of homemade curry. Its weird, I didn't grow up with spicy food and not a lot of people in my family can handle it. But I definitely have built up my tolerance overtime, which I think has made it so I can appreciate the spicy and the flavor instead of just feeling like I'm on fire.
As far as sauces and what not, I love different sauces but right now I am in love with adding bird chiles (or thai chiles which i think are not as hot but look similar) in different dishes. They're tiny and sometimes lethal and fantastic!
lola27 at 5:52PM on 04/04/08
I've really gotten to love spicy food in the past couple of years, I blame it on travel to east Asia and SE Asia that whetted the appetite for more and more spice.
I really do hate the all heat and no flavor kind of spicy, though.
fuuchan at 6:34PM on 04/04/08
i concur with the sriracha and cholula fans. but hey, are you really supposed to keep the stuff in the fridge? i keep my enormous bottle of sriracha in my cupboard because real estate is at a premium inside my tiny fridge.
chipotle is nice for people who don't want too much heat, and i love the smoky flavor... haven't found a great chipotle hot sauce yet, though. anyone?
boltchloer at 8:27PM on 04/04/08
When I'm in the mood for spicy meals I want them to blow my head off.
bessfour at 12:57PM on 04/05/08
I'm with you, Perky! In fact, I secretly believe that excessive heat is always used to disguise bland food :-). I don't think that one can appreciate complex flavours behind the heat (that is, if they are there:-))- I know I can't!
brooke29 at 2:30PM on 04/05/08
Once open, I keep them all in the fridge.
crazyspice at 6:12PM on 04/06/08
Sriracha is a fun, fun thing to use.
I discovered it last year in the dorm, and love that it adds the spice without the overwhelming of vinegar in most hot sauces. Considering, I was in northern Louisiana, the land of Tabasco, so I grew far more accustomed to it than I really wanted.
If you add a kick, you can make a dish more interesting. But if you add an assaulting kick, you'll kill your dish.
jinxstar at 10:36PM on 05/14/08