Speaking of fermented hot sauce, do you have some recommendations? I've been trying to find a way to recreate Frank's buffalo sauce but pretty much every recipe found online uses Frank's buffalo sauce itself as an ingredient :-). I suspect the secret is some long-running fermentation process sorcery.
I just dump a bunch of peppers into a kimchi bucket, ferment, then boil it out with vinegar and stuff. There's not much science to mine. :)
Gonna need a recipe, friend. Gotta try it. I’ve made fermented hot sauce before and it was okay, but I think I overcomplicated it.
> I prefer more flavorful chiles, with less spice. As someone with a fairly high spice tolerance, I've found a strong correlation between heat and flavor . I think anyone coming from a culture that eats spicy food will agree. I had a batch of habaneros I grew last summer that were both the most spicy habaneros I've had, and by far the most flavorful. I've also had some very tasty ghost peppers (when used in moderatio…
It certainly trends that way, but I'm not sure it's a sure correlation. Hatch chiles are flavorful, but not really spicy. Scotch Bonnets are probably among the most flavorful, while I find the much hotter Ghost pepper not to taste like much.
Yeah I think this logic only holds true for individual peppers within one species (or batches of peppers, or even regional variants of peppers). The hotter ones also have more flavor.
If you're comparing two different species of plant though I think all bets are off. If a correlation exists here it's very loose.
> I prefer more flavorful chiles, with less spice. As someone with a fairly high spice tolerance, I've found a strong correlation between heat and flavor . I think anyone coming from a culture that eats spicy food will agree. I had a batch of habaneros I grew last summer that were both the most spicy habaneros I've had, and by far the most flavorful. I've also had some very tasty ghost peppers (when used in moderatio…
As someone who also prefers the taste that comes along with spice, best reasoning I have heard is folks who don’t like spice cannot even taste the flavor that comes with it, so they associate milder peppers as tasting better. I.e. when you are screaming for water you don’t stop to consider the flavor (or you may not even taste it at all as your brain tells you to go into flight mode).
Yep, I literally can't taste food if it's past a certain level of spiciness. I have had hot sauces that friends insisted were incredibly distinctive but I could not even tell apart.
> I prefer more flavorful chiles, with less spice. As someone with a fairly high spice tolerance, I've found a strong correlation between heat and flavor . I think anyone coming from a culture that eats spicy food will agree. I had a batch of habaneros I grew last summer that were both the most spicy habaneros I've had, and by far the most flavorful. I've also had some very tasty ghost peppers (when used in moderatio…
As someone who also prefers the taste that comes along with spice, best reasoning I have heard is folks who don’t like spice cannot even taste the flavor that comes with it, so they associate milder peppers as tasting better. I.e. when you are screaming for water you don’t stop to consider the flavor (or you may not even taste it at all as your brain tells you to go into flight mode).
Yes, I think you're right. When I eat something that's too spicy for me, I can't taste anything. My tongue is numb and feels like it's burning. It doesn't even have to get to the level of screaming for water; I can power through eating it even if it's spicy enough to where my tongue feels numb, but it's not pleasant, and I don't taste anything. I wouldn't even say that I "don't like spice," as spicy food can taste good, but if it gets too spicy I can't taste anything.
I don't mind steamed sprouts today, but I remember how utterly repulsed I was by them as a kid. The preparation doesn't make a ton of difference, in my opinion.
Overcooking will increase the bitterness, the preparation makes a ton of difference. I don't really recall how my mom might have cooked broccoli and such, but I certainly identified things she did cooking that were not ideal as far as outcomes (and I would say she was a reasonably good cook).
As a somewhat recent south Asian immigrant to the USA, I’ve always thought Jalapeños were meant to signify the lowest spice level. Only recently, I discovered its actual reputation is to pack a punch. I grew up with Thai chillies as to mean “the chilli”. I still put this stuff on anything that needs some chillies. And that really does pack a punch.
No, you're correct -- jalapeños have always been the least-spicy spicy pepper in an average US supermarket.
It's just that they used to be spicier.
But if you wanted something really spicy, you never bought jalapeños even in the past -- you went for serranos or habaneros if you could find them.
> I prefer more flavorful chiles, with less spice. As someone with a fairly high spice tolerance, I've found a strong correlation between heat and flavor . I think anyone coming from a culture that eats spicy food will agree. I had a batch of habaneros I grew last summer that were both the most spicy habaneros I've had, and by far the most flavorful. I've also had some very tasty ghost peppers (when used in moderatio…
In my opinion, habaneros have the best flavor out of any chili. Once you get hotter than that, they don't really get more flavorful. I've tasted Carolina Reapers a few times, and they just had this grassy vibe that wasn't very appealing. The very hot ones don't seem bred for flavor, just record-breaking heat.
Habaneros and Scotch Bonnets can have absolutely amazing pepper flavor: sweet, fruity and aromatic. The bell peppers I've had weren't even close.
Alas, I don't maintain the heat tolerance to eat them.
Less spicy is actually good. I prefer more flavorful chiles, with less spice. Mark Miller's conversation with Tyler Cowen is good on this subject: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/mark-miller/ . Chiles are actually fruits and, combined judiciously, create a lot of complex flavors. Excess spiciness overwhelms the flavor. And people who want absurdly spicy peppers, can get them: ghost chiles, carolina reaper…
> I prefer more flavorful chiles, with less spice. As someone with a fairly high spice tolerance, I've found a strong correlation between heat and flavor . I think anyone coming from a culture that eats spicy food will agree. I had a batch of habaneros I grew last summer that were both the most spicy habaneros I've had, and by far the most flavorful. I've also had some very tasty ghost peppers (when used in moderatio…
I don't think the correlation exists so much as it's been created by co-selection in many varieties. Consider many of the smaller, more ornamental, chile varieties: they're often quite spicy, but lack good flavor because they have an almost grassy solvent note in the background of their flavor profile.
That said, I get the hiccups (involuntary) when spice level exceeds a certain threshold, so I'd love if the flavor could be improved while keeping the spice level below my hiccup threshold.
> Have you noticed that you're way more into brussels sprouts now than you were when you were a kid? If you're a GenX-er or a Millenial, that's because today's (delicious) sprouts aren't the same plant as the (gross) sprouts of yore. This is an oft-quoted fact, and it’s true that modern brussels sprouts are less bitter, but that’s far from the whole story. The popular preparation used to be boiling or steaming, and m…
Not everyone tastes them the same. There is a gene that makes you taste more or less the bitterness of PTC (phenylthiocarbamide) https://www.centreofthecell.org/blog/science-questions/why-d...
Sure, but the percentage of people with that gene hasn't changed, yet it is an oft-cited anecdote (I don't know if there's data) that more people like them now than they did forty years ago.
This is often said to be because of the new breed that is less better, but I also agree with GP that better cooking methods have something to do with it. I love brussels sprouts, but my stomach flips at the thought of boiled sprouts.