Chiliheads: The Thread that Burns Through the Night

[frezik]

Who do we have for chiliheads around here?

Not sure if you're chilihead? Go open your fridge, and if you find a shelf that looks like this:

Then you're a chilihead.

[Decker]

I don't hate myself nearly enough.

[voidPtr]

I don't know if I'd go as far as to label myself as a "Chilihead", but maybe "Chili Addict" would be appropriate. I love spicy food and consistently eat it. If I go a few days without chili I get cravings for it.

However, I stick to the soft core stuff (fresh/dried chilis, chili powder, basic chili pastes.) There's a certain threshold where chilis go from really adding a new dimension to a dish to overpowering it and making it taste like paint thinner.

[Bhelliom]

Agreed. Spice is nice, but I am not looking to strip off the lining of my mouth. Food should taste good, not injure you.

But it is all subjective anyway, so what the hell. If you like it, eat it. Just don't be an asshole and tell someone that "it isn't very hot" when you know your capsaicin tolerance is way higher than most people.

[Mighty Jalapeno]

I am not a chilihead by YOUR definition, since I only have three forms of chili-additive:

1.) Franks Red Hot (the big bottle, my family loves it)
2.) Habanero Barbecue Spray (it adds a gentle warming sensation)
3.) Homemade lactic-fermented jalapeno mash (because tastebuds are for pussies)

[Nath]

I have a few chilli sauces. Sriracha, some hot taco sauce, some Maggi hot and sweet. Also some spicy Indian pickles, which are bits of vegetable in a spicy sauce, used as a condiment. My problem with most hot sauces is that the spiciness:other flavors ratio is low. Tabasco-style sauces are mostly vinegar (and I use them as spicy vinegars rather than vinegary hot sauces). It takes an awful lot of sauce to spice up a dish without completely changing the flavor profile. Chilli flakes and powdered red chillies are my preferred ways to heat up a dish. Or actual fresh chillies, usually green.

[voidPtr]

BTW, there are a lot of brands of sauces in that pic.. Is there a significant difference in taste or heat level between them? Is one flavour of "Death" better than the other?

Nath, I have to admit I'm a bit of a tabasco freak..I put it on pizza, fried eggs, ...virtually any fast food. I rarely eat fast food so I forgot to mention it. I never thought of tabasco sauce as chili flavoured vinegar, and of course, that's what it really is, but I like a few drops on my food just to give it a bit of "flavour". (The cursed blessing of a chili-addict is that food without chili is "bland".)

[Nath]

I used to keep a bottle of Tabasco around for exactly that kind of use, but I realized I like Sriracha better for that sort of thing. Still not an ultra hot sauce, but I find it a more balanced set of flavors.

[Bhelliom]

Yummmmm Sriracha....Love that stuff.

Once bought the stuff in the jar, the garlic-chili stuff. Also good.....

[Ulc]

I only have a few chili's

A really strong hot sauce, used very rarely.
Dried and crushed Habanero's (with seeds), used fairly often
Jalapenos in vinegar and sugar
a very nice chipottle in adobe sauce, for me chipottles are generally the favorite kind of chili, the smokey taste complements chili very well and there isn't so much burn that I can't do interesting things with other spice's
Green chili paste, for indian foods.
Sweet chili powder to balance out the stronger ones.
A not very strong tomatto based 'hot' sauce that I use instead of ketchup

[Decker]

1.) Franks Red Hot (the big bottle, my family loves it)

One of us! One of us!

[Aardvarki]

I make my own habanero hot sauces from peppers i grew in my garden.

I put them on EVERYTHING.

What's really odd is... I hate spicy food. (Actually, I just hate food that is TOO spicy, and me being a Hunky - most food is too spicy)

So I guess I'm a chilihead... In moderation. (... What are you doing with those rocks? Don't throw them at m-*OW!*)

[frezik]

BTW, there are a lot of brands of sauces in that pic.. Is there a significant difference in taste or heat level between them? Is one flavour of "Death" better than the other?

A lot of those I bought just to try and to keep my options open. Some of them are way too hot to use everyday. When I make wings (my favorite spicy food), I'll usually use more or less equal numbers of Defcon 1, Original Death, and a random choice of some other sauce.

Blair's Original Death sauce is my favorite "put it on anything" sauce. It use a vinegar base and Habaneros and Chipotles for peppers. Jersey Death is a lot hotter, has a tomato base, and uses Cayenne peppers. So they taste very different.

Mega Death is an extract (where the raw capsaicin is processed out of the peppers). Extracts tend to have a very artificial flavor to them (because that's what they are), but they're the only way to get a sauce hotter than nature alone can do. I don't use too much of that one. Perhaps once every three months I'll make a whole batch of wings and dip one of them in Mega Death.

[dubsola]

I hereby offer up a humble suggestion. All y'all who like wings: one day, make some jerk marinade, marinate your chicken in it, and try that instead. You don't need to coat it in hot sauce, but add a bit as you eat it.

Jerk chicken is the business.

I have one bottle of hot sauce, which I use occasionally, but like Nath - for meals that should be hot, I go with fresh or dried chilllies. Oh yeah, and fresh chillies keep very well in the freezer.

[Rinsaikeru]

I use fresh or dried chilies, or chili paste when I need heat in something. I really don't like the vinegar based hot sauces--they taste not so good to me and throw off my other seasonings in dishes I'm making.

My tolerance is pretty low and getting slightly higher due to a growing addiction to Indian food.

[Coffee]

I thought I was pretty tough; I'm a Texas boy, born and raised. My stepdad's Comanche, so by nurture if not nature so am I. I thought I could handle anything.

Then I went to Korea. I made the mistake of ordering chicken bulgogi (not sure on spelling) as "hot as you can make it." It took me a long time to finish eating that.

More recently I acquired a bottle of something called Dave's Insanity Sauce; It's well named. So far I've used maybe a tablespoon of it.

[SecondTalon]

Bulgogi is close enough. 불 고기 for those who speak the language who.. also probably know what the hell you're going on about.

[voidPtr]

Bulgogi is close enough. 불 고기 for those who speak the language who.. also probably know what the hell you're going on about.

Bulgogi is either a red spicy sauce (usually pork) or a soy-based sauce (usually beef). However, the red sauce is a "normal" spiciness, in line with the usual spiciness of Korean cuisine, and is a normal dish in a typical Korean family meal.

I think the dish the OP is referrring to is bul-dalk ( 불닭), literally translated as "Fire Chicken". It's South Korea's equivalent of machismo drinking food with bits of off-cuts of chicken smothered in a "fire" sauce. The main difference between bul-dalk and American pub chicken wings besides the part of the chicken is that Korean cuisine is consistently spicy, and by extension the average Korean has a much higher tolerance for spicy food, so it takes a bit of escalation to make it more special.

Update: Link here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buldak

[Coffee]

That's it!

[SirHoundalot]

Who do we have for chiliheads around here?

Not sure if you're chilihead? Go open your fridge, and if you find a shelf that looks like this:

chilihead_fridge.jpg

Then you're a chilihead.

I had to do a double take because that looks so much like how my fridge in the office looked a few months ago - down to the insanity sauce at the front!

I've calmed down a little recently with the sauce purchasing because I found that too many of the sauces out there taste RANK. I now only really buy two brands of sauces:

St John and Dolly Smith's Old Nick This is the finest chilli sauce I have EVER tasted. It's the consistency of ketchup, but a brighter orange. The taste is divine and the heat wonderful. No extract makes for a very pure and fruity flavour without the odd chemical aftertaste that you often get from Blairs/Daves sauces.

Chilli Pepper Pete's Dragon's Blood/Dragons Blood Special Edition - Pete's a local guy who makes awesome sauces. The Dragon's Blood has been a mainstay in the fridge for the past 5 or six years now. There's a few festivals in my town and the surrounding county that he makes special edition sauces with a lot more punch for, so I grab those when I can too.

I recently foolishly bought a jar of this too. I can handle a lot of heat but a smear of that on a sausage roll messed me up pretty good. After the burn subsided the dopamine rush left me looking pretty smacked out haha

Anyway, any top tips for sauces?

[Amarantha]

Last time I counted our chilli products (including fresh and dried chillies, chilli flakes and powder, and various sauces and other condiments, both bought and home-made), there were 27. That was a few years ago, and cbf'd counting again right now. But I will just make a special mention of this stuff by Laoganma. It's dried chillies in oil, with salt and the occasional peanut. Not fiery deadly, but still enjoyably hot, and also really delicious. It goes well with most things, but is especially good on shepherd's pie or fried eggs.

[Kevin1632]

<New here,
This one caught my intrest, and I must respectfully state that real chilli does not come in a bottle. We buy ours every fall at the market, roast, and freeze it, in indivdual servings. Of the 140+ edible chillies I prefer "Hatch Poblanos", fully ripe and dried then ground, reconstuted in to Red Salsa.

Regards,
Kevin

[Mighty Jalapeno]

Woo, my FIL's hot sauce is ready!

For the past year, it's been marinating in a 180lb ceramic jug in his basement. Layers upon layers of salt, vinegar, and 6 different kinds of hot pepper, both roasted and normal. (There might be more to the recipe, but that was what I got out of it). The tank was purreed, poured and canned into about 100 jars, many of which got dispersed to friends and family. Last night, I tried some for the first time on some chicken enchiladas.

It is spicy, but not pain-spicy at all. I give it about a 7/10 on the Burnometer. As for flavor, it's got about an 11 out of a possible 10. That's right: it's impossibly flavorful. It trumps every hot sauce I've had up until now for sheer awesomeness, and had my CIL not stopped me, I would have eaten it with a spoon when the enchiladas were all gone.

This year, he's going to use EIGHT kinds of hot pepper, and make enough to put into bottles, label, and sell at the Farmer's Market. It's going to be awesome.

[dubsola]

For the past year, it's been marinating in a 180lb ceramic jug in his basement. Layers upon layers of salt, vinegar, and 6 different kinds of hot pepper, both roasted and normal. (There might be more to the recipe, but that was what I got out of it). The tank was purreed, poured and canned into about 100 jars

Jesus Christ.

My friend was telling me about a visit to a Sichuan restaurant halfway out of Beijing on the way to the airport. Ludicrously cheap, their Lonely Planet guide had list of a few classic dishes with their Chinese language equivalents - my friends ordered by pointing to the ones they wanted. EVERYTHING was ridiculously hot, and there was so much food that they had to get the leftovers put in takeaway containers. Everything was containerised, wrapped and double wrapped, then placed in a fridge. When they woke up the next day the entire hotel room reeked of chilli.