I eat spicy food, but that's because I grew up in a Thai household. There's a difference, however, in spicy food and just being an insane person like the people you see on TV who are sweating and in pain when they're eating super spicy stuff. To use a scale from 1 to 5 (a scale all of the Thai restaurants I worked at use) I can take a 3, but that's rare. I mainly take a 2 since I'm not crazy about the stuff but a little bit is fine for me. My mom and aunt on the other hand, when they were younger, used to bite into fresh Thai chili peppers with their food. Why? Shit if I know, it must be the rural cuisine they were used to eating before they came to America.
Somebody please explain spicy food to me
Really well made quality hot sauce has a very deep and incredible flavor, plus the spice is just enjoyable. I make and age my own habanero sauce and when done right, it isn't really that hot. It's definitely very up there in intensity, but once you've roasted them, made them into a sauce, and aged that about six months, they really mellow out into something incredible. it's not like eating one raw, and it also has a really deep flavor. I think I get why alot of people don't like it, but I personally can't live without it.
Having said that tho, a food can't stand up on only being super hot, it has to have a rich flavor of it's own that compliments the heat to really be wonderful. I also think much can be gained by creating your own sauces. Hot wings do not just consist of fried\baked wings and off the shelf hot sauce. That is certainly involved, but you also need onion, pepper, a little orange, cayenne, garlic, even some brown sugar, all reduced with some red wine(to name some main ingredients I use) which is then combined the off the shelf stuff if you want truly amazing wings. It's about depth, not just heat.
@Potts said:
@pyromagnestir said:
Only if you explain to me how some people can like bland food. Like white rice and plain grilled chicken. Or my mother's favorite hamburger corn and potatoes (shepherd's pie as it is otherwise called, right?)
White rice & grilled chicken tend to go really well with something spicy, like curry, or a mix of grilled vegetables, with some hot peppers thrown in.
People tend to like spicy food because it "spices up" stuff that would be otherwise bland, like rice, chicken, shepard's pie, etc. Spicy food is tough to get accustomed to, but if you start small, like with dijon mustard and a dash of tabasco in your chili, and work your way up, eventually getting to where you can eat slices of jalepenos on sandwiches/burgers, or stomach those really amazing spicy curry dishes, your palate will thank you.
Yeah, Pretty much this.
Spicy (misnomer, you mean heat) isn't really a flavor, it's a food property. I can't stick my finger into a sandwich and tell you it's salty, but at a certain point, if you get some hot sauces on your fingers, you'll actually feel the capsaicin burning them.
So really, it's more of a food quality than a flavor, like crunch, or the icy sensation of drinking a slurpee and getting a brain freeze. These aren't flavors, but they're things we crave because of what they do to an otherwise boring and bland eating experience.
Quick little side story here. I recently had all of my wisdom teeth out at once, and I was told not to eat solid food for a bit to let them heal. After about a day, I was going a bit stir crazy and wanted to ingest something more substantial, but I couldn't, just soup and jello. So for dinner that night was some mac and cheese and pulled pork, which normally would have been pretty damn tasty, but I couldn't have it. I had the "brilliant" idea of sticking it in a blender and pureeing it. Yes, I made a pork and cheese smoothie. It was just about the most vile thing I could imagine. Outside of the context of texture, it was completely unappetizing. The lack of crunch, or texture, in many contexts is similar to the mindset that spiciness enthusiasts feel about food that isn't hot. When they say something is "bland," it's like taking away all of those secondary characteristics that actually make the food we eat appetizing.
Spiciness is akin to an added texture sensation. It's the difference between kool-aid and a popsicle. It's like asking why anyone would ever want to eat something cold. The flavor remains the same, the texture remains more or less the same, but the mouth-feel is fundamentally changed.
Personally, I used to hate spicy food, but at some point I grew to like it. I'm guessing it may have been a few times when I was presented with food that was too spicy for me and I just forced my way through it in order to not offend anyone, or because I was hungry and it was the only option. Eventually I found myself ordering spicier food at restaurants, and eventually asking for hot sauce specifically, and then buying my own to have around the house. Now, I pretty much put sriracha on everything. At barbecues, I put copious amounts of sriracha and mustard on my hot dogs and now I wouldn't have them any other way. I hate ketchup, I find it to be cloying and gross, but sriracha is pretty much the same color so it satisfies that mental image of what a hot dog should be. (Similarly, I dislike syrup on my pancakes, instead opting for butter and salt, but I digress.)
There is a technique to eating food that's too spicy for you, and it has to deal with where on your tongue you allow food to go. For super spicy food, I can manage by keeping the heat to the outsides of my tongue and away from the center while chewing and swallowing. It's similar in technique to quickly consuming a slurpee without getting a brain freeze.
Eventually you should just be able to do shots of lesser hot sauces like you would whiskey or vodka. Incidentally, those are also semi-vile things you grow an appreciation for.
edit: The oatmeal knows what's up: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/sriracha
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