Spicy foods - where to draw the line?

Lostvalleyguy

Lostvalleyguy

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As someone who grows and used hot peppers in my regular cooking, I am accustomed to a little bit of kick in some dishes. Having said that, however, I am not a fan of adding Tabasco sauce as a condiment or insanely spicy hot wings. I enjoy the flavour and heat in some foods, but I think there is a point where things become stupid spicy and become more of a challenge than a tasty food.

Because I cook with spices for myself, I often have to adjust my enthusiasm when I am entertaining others. The difficulty for me is finding the right balance for my guests. Friends will often report that something is spicy when I am unable to taste the spice. How do you draw the line between adding spice for flavour and making things too hot for others to handle?
 
I'm the same as you. I love spicy food, but I can't stand it when things are just hot and don't actually have any taste. When I'm cooking for others who don't like spicy food (my in-laws hate spicy food), I usually add enough spice to where I would almost consider it a notch above bland. I haven't had any complaints yet about it, so I'm assuming that I'm doing it right, lol. When it comes to things like tacos and stuff, I usually don't over do the spiciness. I tend to use green or red peppers and onions when I make stuff like that because I don't want to take away from the other seasonings.

As far as hot wings are concerned, they're one of my favorite things! My husband makes fantastic wings and he's managed to create a really nice spicy BBQ sauce that is great for wings. The other day I actually mentioned to him that Pizza Hut wings are TOO hot. He agreed. We tend to stay away from their wings, lol. You can't actually taste anything else but the hotness with their wings! If we want hot wings, we usually use Frank's Hot Sauce--the mild one. I think the mild version is perfectly hot enough!
 
I really love spicy food and often use even a bit too much spices. Lot's of different types of chili going into my foods. :)
Most of my friends are fine with it, but if I'm cooking for someone that doesn't really like spicy food, I'll be very very carefull with the spices. It takes 10 seconds to put some extra chili powder or hot sauce on mine, but will be significantly harder to get the spices out of theirs!
 
Agreed! Speaking of spices and spicy foods, I just have to mention that I went to WinCo today for the first time and found an ENTIRE selection of every spice and herb you could think of. WinCo puts the spices in these bins and lets you get as much or as little of it as you want. I couldn't help it and I filled a bag with taco seasoning. I haven't tasted it yet, but it smells amazing. I also filled up on pizza seasoning. I plan on using the taco seasoning with chopped onions and red peppers. From the way it smells, it doesn't seem like it will be too spicy, but I'm just making the tacos for my husband and me so it doesn't matter if they're hotter than usual!
 
The tricky thing about spices is that the line is drawn in different places for each individual person. What for you is just a bit of spice, for someone else is unbearably spicy! I consider myself as someone who can take a considerable amount of spice, but not too much. When in doubt, I will always add a bit of spice to where I myself can just feel a little bit. That can already be too much for someone else!
But to me spices apply the same way as salt - when in doubt, apply less than more. If someone wants spicier they can just add some later, but if it's too spicy it's way harder to remove once the meal is ready!
 
I'm not that much of a fan of spicy food, so I draw the line on the mild area. I like a bit of spice, don't get me wrong, but I dislike it for the way it overpowers all the other flavors sometimes, and the fact that it leaves the taste and sting in your mouth for a long time that it sometimes even ruins other dishes because of it. I'd say I draw the line at where it starts to overbear the other ingredients' tastes.
 
My line is drawn that something is too hot when my head starts to sweat and I can't actually taste the flavor of the food. I like it frisky, not blow the top of my head off hot!
 
I enjoy spicy food as well, but I'm definitely not one of those people that can eat habanero's and not bat an eye.

I was just reading a few interesting things about jalapeno peppers recently as a matter of fact. The firs thing that I found interesting was that some farmers are apparently creating varieties of jalapenos that are not quite as hot. I've been wondering about this a lot lately because some of them I've had were almost as mild as a green bell pepper.

The other thing was how to tell if a jalapeno is hot. The article emphasized this isn't based on any scientific evidence but rather hearsay and personal observations. Basically the advice was that if the pepper is smooth and green, then it should be on the sweeter end of the spectrum. However if it has vertical tan streaks, almost like stretch marks on it, where it kind of looks like the surface of the skin was torn a bit, those are generally the hot ones. And finally if the pepper has started to turn red, then it will be particularly hot.

When dealing with guests, I would try to put all the spicy stuff into an optional sauce on the side that can be added - that way they can leave it off if they choose.
 
I know that i will never try habanero again. It almost made me cry lol. I know it is one of the hottest peppers and i have not had the best experience with it.
 
I won't use habanero again either, it is way too much for me to want to eat. Even the tiniest of pieces packs a bigger punch than I want to go with. I have experimented with a number of the hot peppers and for me it was a trial and error experiment, there are really no rules on how to know how hot peppers really are until you eat them. For habaneros I used to wear latex gloves when I was cutting them up which told me it was too much for me to want to eat.
 
When I was really young, I used to draw the line at any sort of spicy food at all.

Then my family moved to Indonesia, and I had to learn to tolerate spiciness or else I'd starve to death. That was about seven years of training my palate. Now, I still prefer non-spicy foods, but I can appreciate a bit of a kick as an aspect to food... and, that prank some people pull where they replace a glob of ketchup for a glob of tabasco sauce? Might surprise me, but doesn't really cause a problem with my food. If you'd told me that as a child, I would just be horrified, because spiciness was like my least favorite flavor of all time ever, ever! It's a good thing that I got used to it, because I'm prone to colds and flu, and I think some spicy ginger and/or chili peppers more often in my food can help to stave them off.
 
I draw the line fairly quickly. My tastebuds love spicy foods but the rest of my body does not, it makes me feel sick rather easily. So unfortunately, I tend to stick mild these days.
 
I absolutely adore very spicy food and have to remind myself when I am cooking for others that most people do not share my feelings. Sometimes I will cook two "batches" one spicy and one not but generally I don't have the time or the recipe just isn't set up that way. I don't mind if my face turns red and eyes water but I draw the line at anything that tastes good but upsets my stomach. On more than one occasion I have had a delicious spicy mean but then up all night with an upset tummy.
 
I love spicy foods! So does my son. We love Mexican food. Our favourite hot sauce is Valentina's, it's actually made in Mexico. I don't think we could ever draw the line on our spicy foods. Although, I am afraid of the ghost pepper. That may be where I'd draw the line! Haha.
 
No habanero or anything hotter for me. If I can't actually taste the food over the spiciness I do not want to eat it, unless it is something like hot wings. But I have found hot wings that were way too hot for me. Other than obvious ones like hot wings, I want to be able to taste the food. I don't mind sweating a little, but if my eyes are watering and I'm drenched in sweat, no thank you!
 
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