A local fried chicken restaurant calls their spiciest chicken WNFA (we're not fucking around), and it's exactly as it says on the tin. When I have enough of it and I've gotten past the initial "why am I doing this? this is stupid, I should stop," I genuinely experience a form of euphoria. The next day is sheer hell though, so I don't do it often. And that's how boring my life is, occasionally eating fried chicken to get mildly high.
I believe I have been to the same restaurant you're referring to, and honestly I believe that the WNFA chicken is likely to be a psychoactive substance. I've only had the barest bite of it, and it is enough to scar me mentally; and to eat an entire meal seems like it would be prone to mind-altering, just like how a stab wound is body altering.
Hyperbole aside, it is interesting to see the sheer breadth in tolerance across friends and family. I'm far from a spice masochist, but I've never shied away from heat since my teenage years. What I find more interesting is the amount of stereotypical spice and heat avoidance I've seen from white family and friends; an example of which I recently heard from a friend, “I don't add spice to my chili, since I know some people don't like that.”
I'm genuinely confused by people who avoid adding additional flavour to their food. Heat avoidance I can understand to an extent, some folks are more sensitive to heat and pain sensations than others. But spice avoidance even from your garden variety spices genuinely befuddles me; and I can not understand how some people do not come across using things like Rosemary, Basil, or Cumin in their cooking.
> I can not understand how some people do not come across using things like Rosemary, Basil, or Cumin in their cooking.
I'll explain it to you :)
I think a lot of people cook how their parents cook. I taught my mom how to better season her cooking, to great success, but I don't blame her for not ever really learning. She learned from my grandma who spent her life on a tiny farm in the prairies, I'd be surprised if they came across cumin very often.
So, you grow up eating beef and vegetables seasoned with salt and pepper and homemade butter and eventually your palate doesn't really require the same stimulation and variety that people with access to more varied ingredients do. It's not that plain-eating-folks aren't aware there's more variety out there, but if they've spent their whole life _without_ those other options, it's just not something their body naturally want. As someone who appreciates music, it'd be easy for me to look down upon those with less developed palates, but to what end? People enjoy what they enjoy, I don't think there's any superiority to be had in liking basil just like there's no superiority to be had in liking djent.
"it'd be easy for me to look down upon those with less developed palates"
I live in florida. There are people here that literally carry Sriracha sauce in their car. I will have people over for breakfast [eggs, bacon, toast, muffins], they will go to their car, and pour Sriracha sauce all over their eggs. It's pretty normal for them to put it on everything they eat. Eating just a potato seems strange to them, it needs that burning sensation. I think it is almost the opposite of a developed palate - it's more like they lost their ability to detect and enjoy simple flavors. Like an alcoholic that can't be in a social setting without liquor.
I think that's the keyword here. The behavior you're describing does sound very dependent, but those dependent on alcohol are a minority. I don't have numbers on capsaicin, but I'd be comfortable betting that the need to spice everything is also not the norm.
If taste and flavor preference is largely environmental as is argued, it makes sense that extremes exist on the edges.
Is it really 'looking down on'?
If someone has a slower car (than them), would it be the same?
I know i have a 'less developed palate', than many as i like the same things day after day after day, then i change something and remain the same again. I occasionally enjoy a vindaloo and other indian food. I know people that chop and change and cook and experiment, and they can tell immediately if I've under-salted a pasta or over-cooked some vegetable.
To some of us, food is fuel, and that's it.
I fear people nowadays take any form of comparison as an insult.
Right, it's conflating development stage with a value judgement thereon.
Someone else might acknowledge that increased complexity is typically an indicator of a later development stage, while preferring or finding moral goodness in an earlier stage of development, or having no value judgement on it at all.
Meh. I don't know how I'm supposed to phrase that in a way which won't offend, but my gut is you don't care and you're just being needlessly argumentative and annoying.
Let's go with "people who've had less opportunity to try novel ingredients and flavors". Does that work for you rendaw?
>What I find more interesting is the amount of stereotypical spice and heat avoidance I've seen from white family and friends; an example of which I recently heard from a friend, “I don't add spice to my chili, since I know some people don't like that.”
>I'm genuinely confused by people who avoid adding additional flavour to their food.
I think there's a communication breakdown here. They're not saying they don't like flavorful food, they're saying they don't like spicy food. "Spicy" and "spice" are two different things, but are often used interchangeably by folk who aren't much into, or don't know much about, cooking. The comment your friend said should (I think, at least) be interpreted as, "I don't add spicy spices to my chili".
Now, I could be totally wrong, and you'll come back to confirm that your friend used absolutely no spices whatsoever, at which point... how does it even taste like chili? :)
EDIT: Cute anecdote; I have to use the word "seasoning" whenever cooking with my two year-old. If I say "spice", she immediately assumes it's gonna be "spicy" and begins to flip out lol.
Chili oil is like setting a 15 minute timer for me. Ten minutes in, my gut starts making terrible noise, and five minutes later, there's no chili oil in my system anymore.
Tastes delicious! But I learned a long time ago that it's an ingredient I need to avoid whenever I'm eating while on the run. Err, on the go.
On the flip side, I never understood the "coffee makes you poop" meme, but it's apparently a similar biological reality for a lot of people.
I know some coffee in the States has / used to have 160b (Annatto) in it. I react to any foods with much 160b. I generally shower afterwards as well for a clean butt and hell was being out on a few hour trip and eating a food I didn't recognize as being on the bad list.
Coffee sets a timer for me - if I had a decent amount of chili the night before, or at lunch with a coffee, the fun begins as they encourage each other.
It's not just something in coffee. I think it's psychological. I used to need to go after the first cup of the day, but now just pouring the coffee in the cup sends me to the bathroom before I even take a sip.
> I'm genuinely confused by people who avoid adding additional flavour to their food
It's not a flavour, it's just pain. You can experience capsaicin on any mucuous membrane of your body. Your tongue and lips just happen to usually be the most convenient ones, but you're not using your taste buds on capsaicin.
Nothing wrong with enjoying painful food. I like exciting my pain neurons too. But not everyone likes pain, while far more people enjoy flavour.
Adding spiciness is not adding pure capsaicin seasoning. Spicy peppers have flavor, but you don't taste it if all you can focus on is the pain. As tolerance to capsaicin grows, so does appreciation for the flavor underneath the heat.
Did you not read the parent comment? Literally the next words after your pull quote was "Heat avoidance I can understand". The comment was about non-heat generating spices.... you know, the things that add flavor without heat.
Or do you find "Rosemary, Basil, or Cumin" to be "painful"???
Otherwise, please do this community a favor and actually *READ* what others say before rushing in and disagreeing with people for something they didn't say.
I've been noticing it around social media lately. People are so aggressive with random strangers on the internet over the most harmless of things. Someone says "Hey I like the color blue" and the next thing people are insulting their mother. Its crazy. 50% of responses on sites like twitter regardless of the topic are just people calling the poster some variation of political insult. People dedicate their entire existence to hating people like Musk. I dont get it, why intentionally be angry all the time. What happened to civil conversation.
To be fair, reading your post I thought, "Was I projecting?" because I've definitely been guilty of purposely diving into a heated convo and doing what I can to keep it at that level. I even said as much in the middle of a heated HN discussion that I'm sure can be dug up, and I've abandoned commenting entirely a couple of times because I realized it in the moment.
It can, unfortunately, be an outlet for people who are dealing with some shit, and they might not realize it. Not saying that's what's up with OP, but I think it's why I've done it myself a time or two, despite usually being civil and open to a conversation.
I learned the hard way about the possibility space of spice perception. Covid killed my ability to tolerate spice. I used to eat spicy wings with abandon but now something as pedestrian as a fast food spicy chicken sandwich requires additional beverages to be tolerable.
Maybe a mild food allergy? I know someone who has that reaction to rosemary and another friend who has it from tomatoes. A simple skin test showed both to be an allergy vs palate issue. Could just be sensitive to spices but it is a fun thing to figure out.
I wondered this the first and only time I had a burrito at Chipotle. Turns out for all the years before that chain existed, Americans were just putting up with flavorful Mexican-American options, when what they really preferred was the most flavorless version possible.
It really depends on your raw material. If it is high quality & tasty then no spices are needed. You get a fresh bronzini from the Mediterranean, you don’t want to ruin it. You grill it, add just some olive oil, oregano and lemon and that’s it. Same for a grilled wagyu beef steak, a bit of salt and maybe some black pepper.
Now if you give me a piece of chicken, of course I will need a ton of spices to make it edible. Indians and the American south have found the best in my opinion (curry and cajun ftw).
If you want to experience a pepper rush with minimal topical pain and maximum enjoyment, buy/grow some fresh Carolina reapers and let them soak in a bottle of vodka or tequila for a couple of days. You can actually taste the pepper beyond the heat and still get a nice endorphin rush when you take a shot of it. It's also great for spicy margaritas
Baker Creek Seed Co (rareseeds.com) is my favorite place to order seeds from. Nice family run business with an absolutely massive selection of seeds. Free shipping.
We raised chickens when I was a kid, and I still raise meat animals today. When I was quite young, meaning no harm, I wrote the name of one of the chickens on the package, to the horror of my sisters. They promptly wrote the same name on all the packages. I've since learned a little more sympathy for people who fall more on the friend side of the friend/food continuum.
I wonder if we ever start to see application-specific biocomputing systems integrated into server farms, we might really start calling our servers "livestock".
When I get a really good spicy time going, I get a kind of tunnel vision and feel like I'm in an altered state. Space and time seem different.
I used to think I had no limits until I ate a Carolina Reaper whole. The pain in my mouth was tolerable, but it caused a stomach pain that felt like my gallbladder had returned, lasting for one absolutely hellish hour.
Yes sir! Good food makes you cry and weep. It is not mere nourishment but an experience dividing the mind and the senses. A test(taste) of your will. A committment to live now and today because tomorrow the ass will be decimated.
Good fried chicken is like a narcotic, it can just knock you out. The Boondocks have an episode about it called "The Itis" and the effect is very real.
Following extra spicy foods with a pint or two of milk neutralizes the post pyrotechnics, for me. If lactose intolerant, sugar works, but not as well(Perhaps in large/unhealthy quantity?). YMMV.
Edit: I always presumed the high after spicy food was endorphins.
Basically, as I understand it, capsaicin can be psychoactive in the same sense that, for example, running or BDSM can be psychoactive: an endorphin rush which can cause a feeling of euphoria.
The milk helps some, but in my experience on absolutely can blow past that point so that the next day you're getting the same tingles from the other end.
I've had one experience with smelling a bowl that had some mexican style dish with habaneros over it. Just the smell made me salivate so much I could feel it in the back of my mouth as a pleasurable anticipation.
Dave's Hot Chicken in SoCal uses carolina reapers to spice their most spicy fried chicken. I really couldn't finish more than 1/3 of it. I've no idea how people eat this and remain unhurt.
dave's doesn't seem to do so any longer, but makes you sign a "waiver" for the hottest spice levels now even though they've toned it down quite a bit at this point. howlin' rays (which dave's copied) still uses carolina reapers and is no joke with it's howlin' spice level.
