251–260 of 336 posts
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> 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…
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.
I can go down the street to a restaurant called Left Bank and they have the most amazing brussels sprouts. I think they cook them in bacon grease. The outside is crispy and it has something like caramelized sugar on it. They are absolutely freaking delicious.
The reason I took away from this: large agricultural producers of peppers bred towards a "low heat, low variance" standard, away from a "high variance" standard that produced frequent hot jalapenos. Low-heat-low-variance is better for mass food production, because producers can just dose the capsaicin directly, which is something they can't do easily when every pepper is a wildcard. There are second-order effects, li…
> Peppers are one of the easier and more forgiving things to grow yourself. Just grow your own or buy from a farmer's market.
They're pretty challenging and high effort, IMO, and certainly not worth the effort relative to just buying some. Jalapenos are like 7 cents each at the grocery store!
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This has got to be the funniest responses to the problem at hand: peppers not spicy enough? grow your own..
As someone that loves hot sauce, including fermenting my own, it's unfortunate that it does actually require growing your own if you want a lot of heat along with flavor. Using capsaicin extracts will give you heat, but often little flavor (or no flavor if you go hot enough).
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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).
My mom bought Green Giant broccoli and cauliflower in a gluey pseudo-cheese sauce. It was as disgusting as it sounds. I didn't like broccoli and cauliflower until I had them raw. Of course, YMMV :)
Being raised in New Mexico, I cannot stand jalapenos. They infect everything vaguely "mexican" themed, and have basically forced me to buy the mildest sauces and whatnot, only to have to add hatch peppers to bring them up to a suitable level of spice. And even then, with the more mild jalapenos we have now, you'll find them in reformulations of mild sauces, and so on a single taste I get that "hot screen door/cat vom…
> I miss territorial house salsa, but Pace killed them over 20 years ago, so I should probably move on I like El Pinto salsa. As something of a counterpoint to another comment thread here, I find that their "medium" salsa is fairly hot and also richly flavored, while their "hot" salsa is hot but not flavored.
For a while there was a "Hatch" branded salsa, which, naturally, only had Hatch peppers in it, but my local store seems to have rotated them out of stock.
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That's super weird, right? Because they could just dope the sriracha batches back to whatever level of heat they want. I make fermented hot sauce once a year, and I end up doing that too? And I'm a dummy? Are we sure this isn't just a market shift thing? Like: maybe they lost some heat unintentionally or unknowingly, but then sales went up?
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.
Because the original Buffalo Sauce used hot sauce as an ingredient. While it's not known what original hot sauce was used when it was created, the staple hot sauce for buffalo wings has been Frank's for many decades. Buffalo sauce is essentially Frank's Hot Sauce, butter and depending some garlic powder. People can add a bit more too it, but the sauce really was hot sauce, butter and some powder.
Now if you're asking how to make Frank's Hot Sauce - yah that's a whole different thing. Which I have no idea of.
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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 spro…
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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.
Also possible: your taste preferences changed over time. I know mine have.
So while that may be true, it’s absolutely true that they’ve changed.