Mucho Guide to Chili
Feeling hot, hot, hot…
Red, yellow, or green and short, wrinkly or thin, chili peppers are one of our favourite spices — and outlets for benign masochism at Mucho.
While the mild-ish peperoncino is probably enough for me, I never thought building up my spice tolerance would become so… addictive. Another addictive past-time? Watching others — a.k.a. those with little or no sense of self-preservation — try scolding sauces called Near Death (friendly, eh?), Insanity Sauce and Crazy Bastard Sauce, preferably during hilarious interviews.
While recipes with peperoncino are particularly abundant, we’ll take a closer at look at these cheeky peppers and leave you with a couple of options for cooking the well-known eponymous sauce, plain chili or your one and only shirley-cohn-carnay.
The Lowdown
To start with, my inner-biologist was shocked to learn these little devils are actually fruits, from the genus Capsicum. So they’re not really peppers at all, with no relation to black pepper or peppercorns (I mean salt’s best friend) whatsoever. This confusing misnomer is brought to you by one of the most confused guys in history, Christopher Columbus, who gave them that name because of their spice. Nice one, Chris.
The first crop is thought to date back as far as 6000BC. Like potatoes, chili peppers — with their multiple-spelling chili, chile or chilli — are one of the oldest crops originating from the Americas. Upon their arrival in 1492, conquistadors quickly started shipping them into the most important commercial arteries during the 15th and 16th centuries. As a result of the Columbian Exchange they are today ubiquitously found in a wide range of cuisines, some more daring in spice than others, from Thai to Mexican.
Why so hawt, you ask? The culprit would be a little thing called capsaicin, the active substance in peppers responsible for its pungency that adheres quickly to your mouth’s pain receptors. These receptors, that react almost immediately, are those that detect heat from, say, a piping hot coffee, or lava, when you have the occasion of ingesting it.
The Catch
Like scorpions, the tinier the hotter. Although it all really comes down to the Scoville Heat Units, a scale that measures the capsaicin concentration in the pepper. It was created by Mr. Wilbur Scoville, a pharmacologist, in 1912. The scale corresponds to the number of times you would have to dilute a chili sample in sugar water to neutralise the heat. The least pungent chili being the bell pepper at 0 SHU and the hottest being the Dragon’s Breath at 2.48 million SHU.
Accidentally eat a Dragon’s Breath one day? You never know — it could happen at a chili eating contest. The key is not to panic and humbly accept the mistakes of your adventurous self as it may very well take you the whole day to feel human again.
Cures for being surprised by some serious heat include dairy (sour cream, milk, cheese or, better, ice-cream), oil, acidic food (limes or tomatoes), bulky food (rice or bread) or sugar. Water, beer, coffee or soda, which is what we will usually have instead, will not. And might even make it worse by spreading the capsaicin throughout your mouth.
However, no matter how your tolerance to heat is these days, your body’s response to capsaicin is nothing if not good news: a raising heart rate, increasing perspiration and a release of endorphins. That’s right, you can grab that tabasco sauce to enhance your mood. If that’s the case, I think Michael Fassbender is about 5 million SHU.
While most recipes will just tell you to use just “chili powder”, just like in our bombastic quick hot chili, it depends on which pepper is used for the powder and there is certainly a scale of spiciness for you to, carefully, choose from:
From 1,000 to 50,000 SHU, in order of trouble, you are looking at Paprika pepper, Poblano verde, Jalapeños, Peperoncino and Tabasco pepper.
Ranging from 50,000 to 600,000 SHU, you’ll be playing with fire with the Pequin Pepper, the Piri Piri, the Wiri Wiri, the Madame Jeanette (not much link between the names) and the Red Savina habanero.
Above 600,000 SHU until about 2.48 million SHU, names start getting a bit twisted and death-metaly, Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, Komodo Dragon Pepper, Naga Viper Pepper, Bhut jolokia (ghost pepper), the Carolina Reaper and the notorious Dragon’s Breath.
The Cheatsheet (of Chile Con Carne)
According to the Chili Appreciation Society International and the International Chili Institute (yes, they do exist, they’re in the US, and damn, I love the internet), there are many ways to enjoy your chili con carne and it’s much, much more than just, well, chili and carne.
Here are our recommendations:
· This Chili con Carne, a.k.a. Texas Red: Use cumin-spiked sauce made from chilies to stew chunks of beef (or tofu) to pin down Texas’ official state dish. Note: there is a strict no filler rule, beans unwelcome.
· This Chile Verde: With pork and no cumin, this stew is preferably made with Hatch chilies, or smokey ones like dried jalapeños (called Chipotles). Beans or pasta still not making the cut.
· This White Chili: Finally one with beans. This chicken stew is made with poblano chillies (the green friendly ones) and hatch chillies (green too but more sizzling).
· This veggie friendly bean and potato chili, which includes tricks like adding a little pressed orange or lemon and finishing with a little booze at the end for extra flavour.
And if chili is not your cup of chill, start with:
· Mixing Siracha with mayonnaise and a little lemon to go on top of some avocado, mushrooms and Japanese rice.
· Our veggie peel crisps.
· Add a little dab of Harissa sauce in your sandwich.
I can’t say when I’ll ever go higher than 30,000 SHU of pepperoncini but I’ll definitely keep trying with these recipes. In the meantime, here’s to adding spice to your life.
