Why does heat “build up” when eating some spicy foods, and in others they have a consistent spicyness?
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I’m also curious why I can eat (as an example) an infinite number of medium wings no problem, but after one super spicy inferno wing, now I experience the medium wing as though it’s equally spicy as the inferno wing.
Like at BWW if I eat a mango habanero, suddenly parmesan garlic are too hot for me 😅
Also, why do some spicy foods get hotter over time?
Went to a barbecue place around Cooperstown, got a pulled pork sandwich with hot pickles on the side. Tried the pickles when they came out, they were fine. Went back to the pickles after I finished the sandwich, and had to chug the rest of my beer to put out the flames.
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It has to do with how fast your tongue/mouth can clear the spice.
When I make a hot sauce with 0 oils, it hit hard ands fast and drops off hard and fast. For instance, my Scott Bonnet. I roast them to dry and concentrate the capsaicin to make them even more spicy. Scotch Bonnet rank in at 100,000-350,000 SCU.
Then I make my Szechuan sauce make with the same named pepper. Its SCU is 50,000-75,000. When I make something with this sauce, every bite just get hotter than the previous one and I got to wait like 10 minutes or so for the heat to go down. This sauce uses oil in it.
The difference between the 2, oil, lipids. The lipids don’t get washed away with just water in your mouth and your saliva and everything your body makes is water based. Capsaicin is lipid soluble. So you got a layer of oil on your mouth with capsaicin that you can’t swallow or wash away and then you add more to it and more to it and more to it. You drink a fatty liquid like milk, it will then finally wash some of that capsaicin down.
It’s a whole family of chemicals, called capsaicinoids, that cause the burning sensation from spicy foods. They have varying effects on the heat receptors in your mouth. Intensity and duration can vary wildly between peppers. Some burn super hot for a brief period of time (like chiltepin) while others burn lightly for a good while. Some torch you at the first touch, and some start slow and end up tortuously hot (like Carolina reaper). Also, combined with the solvents in your food like fat, water, and acid, the capsaicinoids can be absorbed differently at different speeds.
Also depends on the type of chilli. I don’t know the science behind it, but we always notice that the spice hits differently between Thai chilli, Korean chungyang chilli, jalapeños, and another chilli I don’t know the name of.
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