26
Well, that depends on the individual Thai dish or Indian dish and how it was cooked, of course. But I understand what you're talking about. However, the difference in heat sensations is not due to the kind of pepper employed. It's all about fat, really.
Frequently Thai dishes are made with fresh peppers, and have a lot of acid and salt in them (from ...
26
I have done no testing of this at all but I was surprised to find on this site that they recommend trying a spoon full (or cube of) sugar.
Perhaps the easiest way of calming down a flaming mouth is by sucking on a sugar cube or holding a teaspoon of sugar in your mouth. This helps by absorbing the spicy oil that is coating your mouth, as well as giving ...
22
Spiciness is a taste perception, and as such, it is simply subjective. There is no way to create an objective scale for rating it.
I read your comment about "objective spiciness", but it is not something that can exist. It is based on the erroneous assumption that the spiciness you perceive is a 1:1 measurement of some quality of the food. This is not true....
17
There's nothing you can put into the food that will neutralize the spice after you eat it. The only way to avoid the infamous "ring of fire" is to add less spice to begin with. One way you can do this is by removing the seeds. Some of the heat from chilis comes from the seeds, however it doesn't all get extracted from the cooking. After you eat the chili the ...
14
In my book, this is pretty trivial. Wasabi is absolutely a spice - it's something with a very specific flavor, derived from a plant, that can be used in fairly small quantities to add flavor to something.
It's not spicy (spicy hot, piquant) in the normal sense, though. It doesn't contain capsaicin. It is hot in some sense: it contains allyl isothiocyanate, ...
14
Avocado would be the classic answer IME (often in the form of guacamole, but not required to be in that form.) AFAIK it's the fat effectively diluting the hot pepper oil in either case, (where it's unaffected by water since it won't mix) rather than any enzyme.
...and then there's not making the food so spicy it's uncomfortable (horribly unfashionable, I ...
12
Capsaicin isn't actually stored in the seeds: It's in the membrane surrounding them. It's a pretty useless distinction, though, since it's pretty much impossible to remove the membrane without removing the seeds as well, and even if you could... why would you want to? Either way, unless you're talking about dried peppers the seeds don't pack that much "punch"...
11
There's a great answer to this from Vietnam, where super-spicy food is popular and dairy generally isn't. It combines many of the other suggestions into something wonderfully smooth and soothing:
Avocado and coconut milk smoothie
Here's one example recipe and pic. Note that in Vietnam, they love (non-vegan) condensed milk and tend to add it to everything -...
10
The world record holder is currently the Carolina Reaper according to Guinness (as of AUG 2013).
This pepper began its family tree as a crossbreed between a Ghost Chili pepper and a Red Habanero.
The LA Times reports that the hottest Reaper has been clocked at 2.2 Million Scoville units. That's higher than some commercial pepper spray products. They go on ...
10
You need something with fat or alcohol. The burning is caused by capsaicin, a molecule found in peppers, which is not water-soluble. If you go for the alcohol, you'll need something with higher percentage, not a beer, and it might result in more burning. It is easier to drink whole milk, especially because you might need lots of the drink if it is too strong....
10
Have you ever eaten something so hot it made you cry and felt like it'd never stop burning? Given what you've said you've tried, this thing is probably 10-100x as hot as the kind of pepper that would do that to you. Please be careful.
In any case, pretty much the sole point of a pepper like this is to try to be the hottest thing in the world. The amount of ...
10
Capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers spicy, activates a sensory receptor which can also be activated by heat. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin#Mechanism_of_action)
That means that when a food is spicy and hot, you feel both types of heat using the same sense! When the food has cooled and you're not feeling the heat (temperature) any more, it ...
9
I think the issue is primarily linguistic, but there may also be a mismatch between your experience of Japanese food and the average Japanese experience of Japanese food.
Let's start with the experience itself. Wasabi is generally used in moderation in Japanese cuisine, and when real, fresh wasabi is used, instead of the mustard/western horseradish mix that'...
9
If you wish to explore adding spiciness to a dish, there are two primary methods for increasing the heat: additive and reductive. The one you choose will depend on the dish and what you are trying to get out of it.
For something like a simple oil and pasta dish, the latter may be preferable, whereas with something like a three meat chili the former may be ...
9
Try a nut milk (almond comes to mind), soy milk or coconut milk. Here's a highly rated recipe for vegan "Sour Cream".
8
Each variety of chile has a subtly different flavor, but generally the kind to use is determined by how spicy you want the dish to be; spicier dishes need hotter peppers, otherwise you end up with a dish dominated by the peppers. For this reason, most people sort chiles by their spiciness, measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU). The exact same papers can be ...
8
It sounds like it could be Shishito peppers, which about 10% are spicy, and "even experts may not be able to distinguish relative hotness on the same plant.".
8
I've always liked the bread solution more than the dairy solution. It somehow feels to me that bread "mops up" the spicy stuff from my mucosa, while dairy dissolves it, but also spreads it around in my mouth. Maybe it's just a matter of personal preference, but when you can't have dairy, and even when you can, bread is worth to try. Just a piece of fresh ...
8
Yes, though to be clear, you unseal, empty the jars into a pot, heat & add sugar, (while re-cleaning/sterilizing the jars) then fill the hot jars and process. You don't just add sugar to the jars.
To suit the food safety fanatics, use new lids.
I, personally, figure that if I use old lids and they seal, it's fine, because it sealed, and I know that ...
7
I just came back from a local chili festival where I was able to taste the ghost chili for the first time. My favorite by far was a dark chocolate and toffee brittle with ghost chili. You can absolutely taste the difference between the ghost chili and habanero. I was surprised at how different the flavors are, but folks who aren't used to using different ...
7
If capsaicin is soluble in alcohol, and you want a sauce with heat but no taste, there's a very simple way to do it if you do get a hold of pure capsaicin. Keep in mind that pepper sprays used for personal protection or law enforcement are in the range of 10% to 30% capsaicin. Bear spray (commonly seen here in Alaska) is required by law to be at or under 2% ...
7
There's no point in getting pure capsaicin and diluting it yourself when you can buy capsaicin in just about any strength you want with all the work done for you. If you want something truly, painfully hot then get capsaicin 1 mil and then measure it into your dishes with an eye dropper. Be real careful with it, use gloves and don't sniff it, even at 1M it ...
7
Lime juice isn't going to make it less spicy, if anything I've found it accentuates the spiciness a bit although I'm not sure of the mechanism. It could be that the acidity frees up more capsaicin compounds (what makes hot food hot), or wakes up your taste buds more.
Most likely you have simply added a weak jalapeno. Peppers of the same variety can vary ...
7
It's possible it was a combination called 麻辣 (ma-la,) literally "numbing and spicy", a mix of hot chilies and Sichuan peppercorns (which are called Huā jiāo [花椒].)
6
Hot peppers won't work with brine, as brine is water-based and capsaicin (the pepper hotness) is not soluble in water. You would need an oil-based marinade to pass the 'heat'.
6
Capsaicin, the molecules that make chilis hot, is soluble in oil. So when you're cooking something spicy in oil - you're most definitely taking away a lot of the heat into the oil. This is assuming you're going to fry the turkey. If you're not...good luck ;)
So yes, the recipe isn't that insane, it should be reduced in heat. Like soegaard says though, ...
6
Tasting the peppers is absolutely the only way, short of a chromatography machine. This is especially true for jalapeños from grocery. This because, as stated on this site here and in other answers by myself and others, pepper spiciness can vary greatly even on the same plant. Accordingly, chiles mixed possibly from plants, even from different harvests or ...
6
I've never known cayenne pepper to have any flavor, so if it is bitter you may have a bad batch, or the brand you are using may have put in additives that give it a bitter flavor. You may have other sources of bitterness:
beer: brewers add hops to beer to give it bitterness, and some beer is more bitter than others, it depends on which type you chose
Tomato ...
6
I don't think there is an unambiguous system -- for example, the Thai places in my town alone have vastly different systems for rating how hot their dishes are (so an extra hot at one place is a medium at another, for example; this may be partially due to location and thus their clientele). It isn't like restaurants do some sort of analytical measurement on ...
6
The best choice, in my opinion, is not to try to communicate - but to ask for a taste! Places that use spicy sauces will likely be willing to give you a small taste of the sauce (as spicy sauces are usually made in advance, and even if not, they likely prepare the dish for another person at some point).
And even if you're asking about something that isn'...
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