I fear my mum would find mild too spicy lol
Spice ratings annoy me so much! I can eat one meal called flaming hot and it’s cooler than another that is warm or sometimes even mild.
And I just tested the hot sauce Da bomb beyond insanity. Long story short, it lives up to its name.
It’s fun, but it tastes awful. It’s certainly not my hottest sauce, but it’s the biggest slap in the face because there’s not good flavour to enjoy, just nasty flavoured heat.
Isn’t that every hot sauce?
Nah. Some peppers are flavour bombs, others are purely for burn or kick. When making a sauce, you load up flavours and then drop in some of the heat peppers just to bring up the slap and burn. There’s hot sauces much hotter than Da Bomb, but having them you wouldn’t think it because of all the delicious distracting flavours, profiles, and how the heat comes and goes.
Da Bomb is quite hot but it’s got nothing else going for it so you really have nothing else to focus on but the heat.
Different peppers have different flavour profiles, unless the cooking method strips the flavour intentionally.
Naga Jolokia peppers, and the hot sauces, I’ve found go very well with complimenting the flavour of a lamb curry (for example) without distracting from the flavour overall.If you want a good starter tasty hot sauce, go with sriracha, rooster brand if you can find it. It’s a red sauce in a plastic bottle with a green tip spout; you’ve probably seen it at pizza places and asian restaurants many times.
I don’t find it that hot anymore these days, but the flavour is delicious. I use it more then ketchup.
I tried it, it’s not my thing and I don’t go to asian restaurants cuz I don’t like any asian food.
Widely recognized as being horrible in addition to being really hot.
I expect nothing less from a people who eat Vegemite/Marmite.
That reminds me of an anecdote.
When I lived in Utah many years ago, we regularly had the visit of two colleagues from our London office. They would come and stay for a few days to work with us, and of course we entertained them in the evening.
One evening, we all decided to go for a curry. So we went to some Indian restaurant in Provo, UT if memory serves.
The waiters arrived - real Indians in full fake Raj regalia, as per the restaurant’s theme - and took our orders.
Then they asked how spicy. The two Brits looked at each other and said in a low voice “Well, it’s Utah, everything is bland here, so we’d better overdo it on the spiciness to get something halfway as spicy as a London curry.”
So they announced “Nuclear.”
“Are you sure?” the waiters said
“Yeah yeah. Nuclear!”
“Okay…”15 minutes later, the waiters came back with our orders. Then instead of leaving, they turned and faced the two Brits and simply stood there with a total lack of expression on their faces.
The two went “Uh oh…”
It was the hottest curry they had ever had. They tried to put on a good show for the impassible waiters looking at them, but they quickly turned red and sweaty, and they had trouble not looking like they were panicking when reaching for the water.
We were pissing ourselves laughing 🙂
I have essentially the same story, except it’s two Americans visiting Bradford.
They came there to die then.
They knew what they signed up for.
Australian chiming in.
My favourite Indian restaurant was this little hole in the wall place (for the first three years of operation, they upgraded when the word got out). The first time I went I ordered a Vindaloo, the lovely waitress/chef that took my order asked how spicy. I was a fool and said, I like spicy food, how about a 6 out of 10. I actually made it 3/4 of the way through but the owner/other chef came out to check on me, I think because he was worried I was about to combust. It was astounding, easily the best Vindaloo I have ever eaten.
The next time I went in I ordered a white guy 4, it honestly was still fantastic, but not as good. The owner came out to say hi, asked what I had ordered this time, and he said “Ah yes we make that without any chilli.”, never been sure how I should take that. For a while I was hoping to gradually increase my tolerance but I think I am topping out at white guy 9.
What is white guy 9?
The 9 out of 10 they serve people like me, it might have an equivalency for their authentic scale, I don’t know. This is one of those places where when we go in for a meal there is a constant stream of people with much darker skin than us coming in to pick up takeaway and it was like that before Uber eats was in the area. Apparently it was really popular in the Malaysian student community, before our government decided to fuck over the education system to make a bunch of racists happy by limiting student visas.
I guess I was trying to figure out how this 9 compared to the 4 and the 6 from the other paragraph, haha. I get what you mean, though.
I dunno if my tolerance has ever actually increased or not. I can say I sometimes test it with a carolina reaper thing from a local restaurant, and that thing will make me actually sick, haha.
Hopefully this doesnt make me sound too ignorant, but I find Indian food hits different to hot sauce. With Hot Sauce you are trying to condense down all the different elements into a single substance its why it works so well on fairly bland chicken or with chips etc. Indian cuisine is like a palate of different flavours, so instead of having to build sour notes in they can have pickles, for sweetness take some chutney or a Raita or Lassi. Means I can handle a subjectively hotter curry than hot sauce.
That’s probably a dumb take but I find that to be the case, and the larger the group the greater variety of extras can be justified and shared which makes the whole thing even better. At a 4/10 WBS (white boy scale) I get a bit of colour, at a 6/10 WBS I would be fairly rosy and have some sweat going, at 9/10 WBS I am beet red and the sweat is flowing (and I will probably pay for it the next day).
I had the pleasure of attending a Nepali wedding a few years back and I found all the food on offer there very manageable. Also went to a neighbourhood BBQ where a group of lovely Chinese ladies from Heilongjiang had prepared some dishes from their home. When I mentioned the flavour was great but it felt like it was.lacking in heat I got an immediate invitation to her house (which I sadly never took up due to life being busy) so she could make my wife and I the version that’s not been “Australianised” by removing most of the heat.
Anyway all of that is a very roundabout way of saying that for someone as picky as I am about a lot of traditionally English foods, I am glad I can give other cuisines a crack.
TBF, I haven’t fully appreciated an Indian dish if my scalp isn’t sweating.
Had a friend try that with me in R’dam recently, his favorite Korean fried chicken place. Ordered their nuclear option (among a bunch of others), and was humiliated when he died after one and I ate the rest. TBH they were hot, but kind of hot for being hot’s sake, didn’t really add to the flavor/experience, which IMO is the whole point of heat.
Well then they were being stupid because obviously it’s an actual authentic Indian restaurant they’re going to do the spice properly.
God forbid the waitress sitting there hearing this conversation give them more than a you sure after hearing they thought it would be bland because that’s the entire town 🙄.
Man, after hearing that conversation she probably asked for a 10. “‘White man’s burden’ go fuck yourself sahib, have fun with the curry Mr super exotic London man.”
I have also 100% had wait staff do that to me, I learned my lesson after the first time.
“Authentic” Indian restaurants in the West are fuck all like food in India. Indians are not there asking for more and more chilli in their dhal to impress their mates after the pub. It’s an India theme park for lager louts.
Well, the logic was sound: Utah really is quite bland in every way - or at least it was in the 90’s, not sure now - and if I was an Indian opening an Indian restaurant there, I’d tone down the spices to suit the local palates.
This is because “Spice” is not a flavour. It’s a specific sensation of pain.
I’m not British or Australian, but this is what I’d want.
A. Yes, there are definitely people here in the UK who can’t handle anything spicier than gravy.
B. They’re in the minority.
C. I refuse to believe you don’t know someone like that, no matter where you’re from.
I do know someone like that. Their mother was born in the UK and they grew up eating very English. They had zero tolerance for spice and I frequently had them whine that something I made was inedible because it was too spicy.
I refuse to believe you don’t know someone like that, no matter where you’re from.
And quite right. I had a friend who’d get the sweats eating sour candies and couldn’t do anything even remotely chili.
That seems weird. All the people I know from the UK are into flaming hot Indian food so I can’t imagine they would have a problem with mild salsa. And I have yet to see an Aussie fridge that doesn’t have multiple bottles of extra hot sauces. I consider myself to be a wimp with hot spice - my stomach and I disagree on the matter and it wins - but even I can handle “mild”. Not that I believe people don’t exist (I know one or two), but that there would be enough population to make it a worthwhile sales change surprises me.
At the other end of the extreme, I’ve had multiple Irish and English customers at work say they won’t eat our white pudding, as the cinnamon makes it too spicy. There’s plenty of old people like that in either country that bring down the average spice tolerance by quite a bit.
That sounds like they don’t like the flavour, rather than the heat? I noticed when I was in the US that so many things were flavoured with cinnamon and it’s a very rich and overpowering taste. Like everything is suddenly a biscuit. Even toothpaste.
I’ve lived in Britain and Australia and I’ve never seen this, and both places have good spicy food so I assume they didn’t sell well.
I’d be quite surprised. The USA and Aus have quite a bit of spicy influence. India for UK, Thai for aus…sure many people don’t like spicy food but most do.
I loved in UK for a bit and remember being quite surprised that fàst food, like burger king, had proper spicy food.
I swear there’s probably more Indian restaurants in the UK than there is in India. Where I suppose they are just called restaurants.
the entire spiciness of the world is concentrated along a single road in Balham
Fun anecdote: I had an indian colleague who could not handle spicy food. He just doesn’t come from that one single region that shoves chilli onto everything.
Opened my eyes to the idea that indian food being spicy might be as misleading as english food adding mint to everything (blame: Asterix comics in europe)
As an Indian that’s travelled throughout India and consumed cuisine from several different regions, I’m not entirely sure who told you this but some degree of spiciness is universal in the dishes. Even milder vegetarian dishes have a kick.
It may have been your colleague that told you this but it certainly isn’t one specific region.
The south Indian is where the spice is. North Indian is where the partying is.
Spicy food has a history, particularly in the US, of being associated with masturbation and hypersexuality. Puritans wants food as bland as possible.
In Europe, after the colonial era started, spices became more widely available and were no longer a status symbol (as they were previously only available to the wealthy). This led to the elites turning their noses up to spices and a belief system that the base ingredient should not be defiled in flavor by spice which eventually bled over into the rest of European culture.
Serving richly spiced stews was no longer a status symbol for Europe’s wealthiest families — even the middle classes could afford to spice up their grub. “So the elite recoiled from the increasing popularity of spices,” Ray says. “They moved on to an aesthetic theory of taste. Rather than infusing food with spice, they said things should taste like themselves. Meat should taste like meat, and anything you add only serves to intensify the existing flavors.”
“In Europe, meat was considered the manliest, strongest component of a meal,” Laudan notes, and chefs wanted it to shine. So they began cooking meat in meat-based gravies, to intensify its flavor.
Cooking with spices is different from spiciness specifically but I think the same principles apply (with regard to perceptions at the time).
Spicy food has a history, particularly in the US, of being associated with masturbation and hypersexuality. Puritans wants food as bland as possible.
Huh. So that’s why.
Also, this sounds like some old school Kelloggs shit. That guy was an absolute freak.
Yeah corn flakes were invented to bland you out of jerking it.
Aussie here. I was in Bangkok this week and currently on a TGV hurtling across EU towards London.
The Thai food in Australia is not as spicy as the stuff in Thailand. It’s otherwise authentic.
The hottest Vindaloo I ever had was in a London pub. I haven’t been in the last 12 years, so I’ll measure this again. I also haven’t seen Foster’s beer on tap since my last London visit. Go figure.
Yes, but it’s spicier than a mild salsa from old El Paso.
I loved in UK
Me too, me too…
I’m unsurprised about Australia. The food culture there is pretty great but somehow good Mexican cuisine is almost entirely absent.
Yes, it’s getting better, but it’s pretty poor. It’s not due to an aversion to spicy food though. It’s due to a lack of knowledge of how to make good Mexican food. There are not a lot of Mexican immigrants, especially compared to China, Thailand, Vietnam etc. Indian food is also surprisingly poor here, given the large Indian population, but many are recent migrants, so it is improving.
Probably has to do with vitamin D status/availability of people who live closer to the poles: https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/JP279961
Basically capsaicin can bind to similar spots as vitamin D, and if you have relatively low vitamin d, that can lower it further temporarily.
Please note that this is regardless of race. I can’t edit any of my comments anymore for some reason on amy instance so I wasn’t able to add that in to emphasize this isn’t racial.
Why wouldn’t it be? Darker skinned people have a hard time with northern winters due to the lack of sunlight. Read an article when I lived in Chicago about how many black women were diagnosed and lacking vitamin D.
(CAN’T EDIT)
Meant to say, “Why couldn’t it be?”
Because race isn’t genetic and isn’t scientific. It should competely be removed from the sciences entirely.
Twins with same dad and mom can be different races.
People who have no relation can have the same skin tone and can be labeled as the same race by someone looking at them.
If there are specific genes or biochemicals causing different vitamin status in people, that is not racial, that is genetic and environmental. They need to cite those specific genes or biochemicals to actually conduct proper science. If the mechanism is melanin, then that needs to be properly described as melanin and not race- there are people who racially are black with no melanin - albinism.
Everyone living at the poles has lowered vitamin d status and elevated vitamin A status, that’s why you can’t eat livers of polar animals or you’ll die like those explorers who ate husky liver.
Vitamin D daily amount is super super easy to get, something like 5-15minutes standing outside is all you need. People do more than that when they walk to their car. The reason their vitamin D is low is often due to needing other vitamins and nutrients that work with it. Vitamin D status is closely related to other fat soluble vitamin status (vitamin k, e) and B vitamins and many other things, not just accessibility to sunlight or dairy or melanin content of the skin.
Additionally melanin content of the skin can change a little over time, including with most metal supplementations like copper, iron, and zinc - that’s why zinc and copper deficiencies are associated with vitiligo and why giving vitiligo patients zinc can help treat the condition. It’s also why skin bleaching works biochemically. It’s why you can tan.
What you eat and do affects your melanin content, but it certainly would not change someone’s race, because race is an arbitrary grouping of features that includes skin color from various genetic and biological causes, meant to enforce roles and class onto people.
So no, it isn’t racial, it is related to vitamin D status.
Vitamin D daily amount is super super easy to get, something like 5-15minutes standing outside is all you need.
True it’s like 80% of daily vitamin D intake in 15 minutes even when you’re only showing like 20% skin.
But sometimes that be harder than you’d think. There’s no direct sunlight to my apartment, at any point of the year. Despite these apartment complexes being called “Sun Valley” lol. I supplement vitamin D in the winters though. Have to. I’m not always awake during the few hours the sun is up and even when it is often there’s heavy cloud coverage.
If you do supplement vitamin D though, remember to do it in the morning rather than evening, as it’s basically an antidote to melatonin, so to avoid fucking up circadian rhythm (or to create a new one) melatonin at night and vitamin d in the morning.
Yeah again if you aren’t absorbing adequate vitamin D from being outside, it is probably more related to other vitamin deficiencies, often vitamins k and e. That’s why for years there were no known health benefits of supplementing vitamin d, until it got paired with vitamin k - your vitamin d supplements you take literally have vitamin k in them for this reason.
It is actually a better idea to take it midday or later in the day, but paired with other fat soluble vitamins and calcium, and this is intuitive that your max vitamin D status naturally would be at the end of the day once you’ve eaten and been in the sun all day.
You would never wake up full of vitamin D, the premise doesn’t make sense.
Melatonin and vitamin D have a complex relationship with calcium and serotonin and other biological pathways. I wouldn’t call one an “antidote” to the other because they are synergistic.
It’s not just because they’re synergistic.
I say “morning” but 11-14 is basically my morning and I’m in Northern Europe. But yeah, probably best to take it dawn than dusk. And research seems to agree.
During natural day–night rhythms, serum vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) increases rapidly as a result of UVB exposure [32], which occurs mostly between 11:00 and 15:00 h at higher latitudes (Europe, USA) since UVB is largely absent before and after these times due to the large solar zenith angle [9]. Also after supplement intake, serum cholecalciferol starts rising in a similar (rapid) fashion as after UVB exposure [32]. It is not unlikely that increases in cholecalciferol levels during the time window in which UVB exposure naturally occurs is most optimal for subsequent processing of vitamin D metabolites in the liver and kidneys. Especially because organ metabolism (i.e., nutrient uptake and processing in the liver and kidneys) is also regulated by circadian clocks.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1087079220301222
But yeah “antidote” is hyperbole, my bad. “Further study is needed.”
That isn’t dawn. No one should take vitamin D at dawn or when they first wake up. They should take it later in the day. Not at dusk either.
Are you telling me people with dark skin have equivalent vitamin D production, given the same sun exposure, as people with white skin?!
Read what I wrote again.
*cant eat livers of polar predators, not animals. It’s generally ok to eat lovers of animals like caribou
According to a dermatologist pricing in the Caribbean, most of the people living there have Vitamin D deficiency as well.
When it’s hot and sunny all year round most people just avoid the sun all the time.
In Australia they stopped publically funding vitamin D blood testing because it just KEPT returning deficient. Basically everyone here needs to supplement Vit D. Well applied sunscreen blocks vitamin D absorption by like, 95%.
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The normal one isn’t even spicy, my 3 year old can eat it, and could when she was 2.
That said, the Sainsbury’s own fajita kit is superior.
Better yet, make you own fajita seasoning and use non UPF wraps.
For anyone wondering, if you can get them, these are your ticket to flavor town, especially the dried🌶️ pods you can grind yourself
I recognize MSG gets a bad rap, but I still shy away from pouring pure MSG on my food. To get that umami flavor I use some combination of powdered dried mushrooms, miso, soy sauce, fish sauce, or Worcestershire sauce in a marinade. Fiesta seasoning is certainly easy though, it’s everywhere here in Texas.
Hey meaning no offense but you personally but do you realize the MSG is bad is an easily traceable to a single source racist myth yes? Googleing turns up a bunch, but this one is pretty concise: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51139005
Not that I’m assuming you are racist of course! The BS about MSG permeates our culture.
This isn’t strictly true and it’s a sloppy article.
While MSG alone does not create a consistent response in all people, SOME people DO have issues with glutamate and glutamate has absolutely been indicated as playing a role in several diseases.
This can be true of many many vitamins and nutrients though - for example, some people with eg Wilson’s disease are sensitive to copper. They get so much copper it causes them to be ill. They therefore avoid copper in their diets. That does not mean copper is a problem for everyone, but we wouldn’t insist those people eat copper either.
They’re saying they like to use food based sources of msg rather than the chemical msg to add that flavor. Nothing to do with “msg bad”
Ah ok, fair enough.
Oh for sure, but keep in mind this is in the context of an Old El Paso Extra Mild Taco Kit. Fiesta is a step up from that
Lmao touche
What’s upf?
Nothing f, what’s up wit you?
GOT EM
Ultra Processed Foods. I should have written that in the first place rather than use the acronym, apologies!
The definition is a bit flakey but they’re essentially foods that contain emulsifiers, stabilisers, modified starches and so on. Things that you wouldn’t find in a domestic kitchen. But also foods that have undergone so much processing that they’re barely food. There’s growing evidence that they’re driving obesity and driving a wide range of health problems and even mental health. It’s eye opening how much of our food is UPF and quite difficult and expensive to get away from.
The definition is a bit flakey but they’re essentially foods that contain emulsifiers, stabilisers, modified starches and so on.
But that stuff can be found in domestic kitchens? Egg yolk is an emulsifier, gelatin is a stabilizer, malt is a modified starch, and I can get all of them at normal grocery stores?
Are eggs UPF now?
Eggs obviously aren’t UPF, no. Eggs are in group 1 of the NOVA classification system. Using things like eggs and cornflower are fine, it’s the industrial emulsifiers that are the problem.
Here’s a pretty good summary:
There is nothing wrong with emulsifiers per se – think egg yolk, cornflour and other unprocessed / minimally-processed ingredients that are used in cooking. It’s the category of industrially created or modified emulsifiers over which questions hang. Examples commonly used in IDP include sodium stearoyl lactylate (E481); mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids (E471); and (deep breath) diacetyl tartaric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, aka DATEM (E472e).
https://www.sustainweb.org/blogs/oct23-real-bread-is-not-ultra-processed-food-upf/
My mother has complained that saffron is too spicy. Yes we are melanin deprived why do you ask?
she might have an allergic reaction to it, same as people who describe kiwi fruit as spicy
No she’s just so white she bleaches stuff on contact.
bit harsh to say about your mum
I say, I said, bit harsh to say about your mum
Im not any different. I have seen most of The Weavers perform and I have seen Pete Seeger perform more than any other musician. We are white.
I said, bit harsh to say about your mum
