February 20, 2021 • 52 mins
Born and raised in South America, chilis were the earliest crop domesticated in the continent and among the first items brought back to Europe by Columbus. Today people are really, really into them. Find out all about 'em in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody, Chuck here, Happy Saturday. Do you want to
know how Chili Peppers work? Because we did and we learned.
This is from September. How Chili Peppers work. It's hot stuff.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
(00:22):
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Thurs,
Charles W Chuck Bryant and Jerry and that makes this
stuff you should know. That was so good to quote
the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the band they apparently used
(00:44):
them at Guantanamo Bay to torture prisoners. Really yeah, that
surprises me. I know usually that's like I've heard of
stories like that, but usually it's some kind of dark
metal or something like super Darling vocal band. Of might
say abrasive, some might. I think it's very soothing to
hear death metal. Supposedly there's a study out there, the
(01:05):
head of ridiculously small study population that found that it's
calming has a calling influence metal music does paid for
about the Metal Association of North America. The Skandinavia. Uh yeah,
I'm kind of surprised they played the Chili Peppers since, uh,
it's pretty easy on the ears. Isn't it Well one
of the songs was California Cation. The other later stuff
(01:28):
isn't as good. I could go a little crazy with
that one. I'll talk what were you going to quote?
I was gonna say give it away, give it away
now or something like that, or fight like a brave.
I haven't heard that one. That's early stuff. You could
just say like under the Bridge downtown. Yeah, I ate
(01:49):
a chili pepper. I actually read his biography. I guess
it was an autobiography Anthony Keatis, because I was he
writing about himself. Yeah. I was just going through a
kick where I was reading music autobiographies of for just
rock star stories. Didn't you recommend the best? Which one
(02:09):
was it? Uh? There's one, um quintessential one. I can't
remember what it's called, the Quintessential Crew. Yeah, just look
at I mean it's that's not an autobiography, that's just
a biography. Yeah, but that one's really good. The Slash
one is good and the Keytest one is good. Man,
he that guy. He had troubles, oh yeah, just bad
(02:30):
drug troubles and woman troubles over and over and over.
But he's good now. Good for him. Yeah, welcome back.
To the fray, Anthony Keynes. That's what I say. So
we're not talking about the red hot chili peppers. We're
talking about red hot chili peppers, right, not the right
We're talking about chili peppers. Depending on where you are
(02:52):
in the world, c h I l I peppers or
c h I L E peppers or just chili's. Yeah,
you could say that. I think a lot of chefs
just call them chilies. Well, yeah, because they're like, they
don't waste words. No, they don't say peppers. It's a
couple of extra syllables. Yeah, exactly, No, chef, give me
some of those chilies. Uh. It is the bell pepper
(03:16):
and the celery stalk and the onion is part of
the trinity of I guess you would call it Nolans cooking. Sure,
the bell pepper is a chili pepper. It's just um,
a non hot chili pepper. But it's still the same thing. Um.
(03:37):
And it turns out that we get that terminology chili.
It actually was used by the Aztecs or the Triple
Alliance and Mesoamerica, the Triple Indy's the Triple Alliance prior
to the arrival of Columbus, and it was Columbus himself
where we get the the misnomer chili pepper, because Columbus,
(03:58):
he's a big dummy. Can that guy get anything right?
So he comes across the chili pepper and decides that
it must be a relative of the black pepper, with
which he and the rest of Europe are already very familiar.
So he calls it the chili pepper because he hears
up in Meico they call it chili's, so what the
Triple Alliance calls it. So that's where it came from.
(04:19):
Chili peppers, but it has no relation whatsoever to the
chili or the pepper. The black pepper um and it's
been around. It's actually one of the oldest domesticated crops
in the America's actually, yeah, it started out in South
America about six thousand years ago. I saw nine thousand,
let's stay between five and twelve. Uh. And they don't
(04:42):
know whether it was Bolivia or Brazil. There's a heated
debate in the pepper community on the country of origin.
But they do know that birds are the ones who
dispersed them in. Birds can't feel heat in their mouth,
so they carry them around and propagate the seeds, and
uh then Columbus of cour brought them to Europe and
that's how things spread. That's why you can use hot
(05:04):
sauce or chili pepper spray or something like that on
your bird seed to deter squirrels. Yeah, because the birds
are fine. Yeah, but the squirrels squirrels around going And
it says here the birds can't digest pepper seeds. But
nobody can really digest pepper seeds. If I can't whole,
I totally can't know you can't. I will show you
(05:25):
right now. I think you can show me your stool.
Uh No, we can't digest them either, because we don't
digest seeds that aren't chewed because they're covered in cellulose
and it just goes straight through to our poop. Exactly
same with corn. Yeah, because that is a seed. It is.
I'm glad you finally said that. Somebody needed to say it.
(05:48):
I think that's one of the trendy facts. Don't you
think that corn is a seed? Yeah? Yeah, probably. It
seems like I saw that all over the internet. It's
pretty hot right now. Corn and poop, it's a hot topic.
So um, I did it don't be dumb on that.
On hot topics van corn and you pop. Yeah. See
(06:09):
so um Columbus brings the stuff back and it spreads
like crazy like syphilis. Yeah, because think about this, Um,
chili peppers, we're we are native to the America's and
we're unknown outside of the America's until about five hundred
or so years ago. Now they're grown in just about
(06:31):
every country in the world. Um, there's all different types
of varieties. Um. But it turns out that there's twenty
five wild species and five domesticated species. And one of
the um noteworthy things about chili peppers is most of
the time, when humans domesticated a wild crop, they would
(06:54):
stop using the wild version of it because it was
just so far inferior to the domestic hated versions. Not
so with with um chilies. Wild chilies are just as prized,
if not more prized, than the domesticated ones. They're delicious.
So there's five species, chuck. And by the way, chili
peppers blowing to the night shade family with potatoes, tomatoes,
(07:16):
goaji berries, eggplants in night shade and um, the five
species are fun to say. Yeah, I wasn't even gonna
do it, but I encourage you too, Okay, Uh kept
cicum and you um kept ciccum chins kept siccumb fruitescents
(07:37):
kept scumb, but cadam and kept siccum. Pubescence does have
little hairs on him. I saw that one coming. So
those are the five families. H Peppers are generally hot,
although we'll get into all that with the varieties. Like
you said the bells, everyone knows bells aren't very hot, right,
(07:58):
but um, what you're talking about with heat is what's
called their pungency. And the heat actually uh comes from
alkaloids present in the peppers called cap sasan yes, which
we talked about in December pepper pepper Spray episode, because
that's the cap that's what they're using in pepper spray.
If you didn't listen to it, go check it out.
(08:19):
It's a good one. But yeah, that's kind of funny
to think about defense. Self defense tool is really just
uh canned hot pepper. Yeah, because that stuff can be
It works. Yeah, it really does work. Um. And with
with the the pungency of a pepper, most people think
that it's found in the seeds. That's actually a myth.
(08:42):
Well it is found in the seeds. It's not housed
in the seeds, right, So the seeds are attached to
the pepper itself through something called the placenta. It's a membrane,
that white stuff that's inside of a pepper, right, and
that's where the cap sasan um is stored. Yeah. Um,
And since the seeds are attached to the membrane, a
(09:03):
lot of that stuff makes it way its way to
the seeds. But if you really want the high heat,
you eat the membrane. If you want want the high heat,
just eat the whole thing. I D seed and D
membrane mine. But uh, if you're looking for heat, then
just don't even sweat it. Literally, don't sweat it. That's yeah.
That's like the second at least pun that you've made.
(09:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, well was the first one? Something was
they were both accidental hot. I can't remember what it was. Well,
those are just words. No, it was perfect, It was
really great. Uh. So the pain is actually not coming
from your taste buds because they don't feel pain. It's
coming from pain receptors in your mouth, and it sends
(09:47):
a message to your to your brain saying this is
super hot. I wouldn't eat that much unless you like it. Right.
It's the same pain receptors that UM tell you that, say,
the sip of coffee you just took is too hot,
or like something is thermally too hot. It's triggered by
CAP sason. It's the t r p v one receptor
(10:10):
and that triggers the release of a neurotransmitter called substance
P and that's cap sason can also block. What's crazy
is yes, so the it's what when we'll talk about
it a little more later. But cap sason is used
as a topical pain reliever, right like Shaquille O'Neal knows
that he is he uh I think yeah? Um, so
(10:36):
cap sasan If you rub it on the skin, it
goes to those trp v one receptors and basically overloads
them so thoroughly that they're no longer able to transmit
the sensation of pain in that area. So it's a
local anesthetic. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, uh, And lots
of other health benefits we'll talk about. Peppers are great
(10:56):
for you. Peppers are super Uh. They do not cause
ulcers that is a myth um and in fact, they
protect the stomach lining or can and they can also
thin the blood, so you need to watch out for
that if you are on an anticoagulant. Yeah. I don't
know if they say that on the prescription or not.
But the pepper prescription no prescribed. It's in Alabania today.
(11:24):
Uh No, the anticoagulant prescription. Of course it might. But
if you are in a contest or just at dinner
and your mouth becomes inflamed, um, don't well, you can
drink water. I think it provides a temporary respite. I
don't know if it even does that. It does for me.
It basically smooths the stuff around and throughout your mouth. Yea,
(11:48):
which is not good. What you want is something fatty
like milk, Yeah, because cap sasan dissolves in the presence
of fats or like um, if you eat a lot
of Mexican food or Indian food, Um, that that sour
cream and that yogurt is a nice way to smooth
that out. That's what it's there for. Baby. Well, that
in taste and in flavor and texture and everything else. Yeah,
(12:12):
I guess. So. Yeah, it's not like they're, like you said,
some sour cream because this is too hot, but it
definitely helps. I read an article actually with a guy
who was in a contest and he was a hot
pepper guy and he described I think he ate like
three ghost peppers just in twenty seconds, and he was
(12:34):
fine at first. Then it got hot like in it
not in his mouth but in his throat, and then um,
he just kept going through waves like he said it
would go away, and I thought it was good, and
he was like an hour later, it felt like a
red hot burning nickel on my stern um and it
was just moving its way down, I guess. And then
he said he felt jubilation, like exhilaration, which we'll talk
(12:57):
about this one of the effects of peppers that can
you know, pick up your mood. But he said he
was just like I felt like he was on cocaine. Weird. Yeah,
because they trigger a release of endorphins exactly, so you
can get a runners high or some sort of high
off of eating peppers, which is why some people eat peppers.
They really makes them feel great. Yeah, I guess this
(13:19):
guy wasn't a runner. He must have just done some
cocaine before his line, right, that was his go too.
And um, so you said that birds are immune to
the effects of peppers, and they also spread the seed
by pooping it out right. Um, mammals are not immune
to the effects of it, including humans. And apparently humans
are the only mammals that purposefully eat peppers. And it's
(13:41):
been called a form of benign masochism. Oh yeah, interesting,
but it makes sense if um. And the reason why
they think peppers have that kind of burning thing is
is to protect itself, to ward off mammals from eating it. Um.
But the the idea that we can and get some
sort of rush from it, it's kind of counterintuitive if
(14:04):
you think about it as far as evolution goes from
the pepper standpoint. Sure, yeah, because that encourages people to
keep eating you. Yeah, that's a good point. All right, Well,
let's take a break here and we'll come back and
talk a little bit about how the heat is measured
in a hot pepper. You know, stop you all right?
(14:39):
I guess we need to talk about Wilbur Scoville, Mr
Scoville doctor. He's a pharmacist. Yeah, but I wondered if
he was a doctor. I think he got an honorary doctorate.
He deserved one. You count those? Uh? Sure? All right,
probably depends on where it's from what it's for, but
sure I would, of course I want to be like
(15:00):
you can call me doctor Mr Clark, Dr Mr. Uh.
He was a pharmacist, like you said, who developed, um,
something called the Scoville organ elliptic test in nineteen twelve,
and uh, what is this a hilarious name for what
it is. It is kind of weird, isn't it. You
(15:20):
should just call it the chili test or something. It
just made me laugh like a goon a. Well, previous
to this test, um, the only test was basically just
to have people eat them and ask them how hot.
It's pretty hot? Okay, that's a pretty hot pepper. Give
me some milk fat, right, technically pork fat whatever. You
just need a slab a fat and get rid of
(15:42):
it real quick. Yeah. They said chocolate too will help you. Well,
it's a fatty yeah, full of lipids. I think that's
people just like the chocolate with their hot stuff. Uh So,
Scofield says, there's got to be a better way, and
he says, why don't we devise a test where we
have people peppers and ask them out hot It is?
Pretty much? But let's do it in a little bit
(16:03):
different way. Let's keep feeding them peppers that are more
diluted until they can't feel heat any longer, and just
make it a little more organized and formal. So the Scoville,
the Scoville heat unit is what it comes up with, right,
So for example, of bell pepper has a zero, not hot,
but say Hobban euro some types of hobby euro peppers
(16:25):
can get up to like five hundred thousand UM. I
think the red something, Oh, what is it? I'm sorry,
the red Savennia haban euro pepper got up to five
D seventy thousand Scoville heat units. It's very hot. And
what that means is that it would take five hundred
and seventy thousand cups of water to dilute one cup
(16:46):
of extract from the red Savinia habban euro and one
shot of milk fat right before before anybody could say
I detect no heat whatsoever. So that's what. Yeah, it's
a tremendous amount of war. And it's not like he
was pouring a whole cup of this stuff into five
hundred and seventy thousand cups of water. It's math. I
think he just used fractions. Yeah, probably, so yeah, you
(17:08):
know a minute to come to that conclusion. I was like,
what kind of vat did this guy have in his yard?
A big one? Uh? So that was the the old
test um. And even though they no longer use that,
they still use that s h U. Scoville heat unit
as the unit of a measure, which I think is
a nice little tip of the cap. It is because
it could have changed it. Wilbert Scoville's ghost is like,
(17:30):
I approve. Uh Now, what they do is use liquid chromatography.
Uh and they've been doing that since about the seventies.
And that's not specific to testing peppers. It's basically just
separating and analyzing compounds of any mixture, right, but you
can target the specific type of compound and in this case,
(17:51):
you're looking for the alkaloid capsation. Yes, and you determine
how many parts per million is present in a given pepper,
and it takes the subjectivity out. Yeah, and it's literally
just measuring the level capsation level in any pepper. But
what's neat is they figured out Scoville is clearly onto
something because they figured out that if you take this
high performance liquid chromatography measurement and multiply the number it
(18:15):
spits out by sixteen, you will come to the Scoville
unit by a factor of sixteen. Bad, But that's neat
that you can it's not like sixteen seven or something
like that, or or multiply it by the fact that
you can multiply it by a standard number and come
to the Scoville heat unit each time means he was
(18:36):
doing something right. Something there's something there Scoville way to go.
That sounds like one of the real men of genius
commercials or something, right, I guess. Or else should we
get to some of the types of peppers? Now, are
we there? Yeah? Yeah, I think so, because if you're
a scientist, there's two ways to classify a pepper by
(18:59):
its heat using the Skillville heat unit index, and by
its shape. Yes, and then color. Well, apparently scientists don't
classify them by color. I'm talking about you and me, buddy.
Hotheads were in the kitchen, okay, and we're and we're
looking at peppers, and we're like, look at that red one.
Look at that green wrinkly one. All right, that one's
(19:20):
shape funny. That's a funny shape. That's how we classify
red funny shaped one. It's really hot. Wrinkly or smooth
is another thing you might notice. But you're right, as
far as science is concerned, its heat and shape, and
then the shapes go from shape A to shape I right.
And my favorite descriptor is the lantern shape. I think
(19:41):
that's great. Yeah, that's the hot man euro. Yeah, very
thin skinned, uh and very hot? Yeah? Can you can
you eat peppers? Which I didn't even ask this? I
eat a lot of peppers. Um, My heat tolerance isn't great.
I do like the heat, but I'm a bit of
(20:01):
a whimp. So like, what what kind of pepper do
you normally? Can you eat? Like a Scotch bonnet? Well,
I mean I cook a lot with just bells. Of
course that doesn't care. Sure they do, okay, because they're peppers,
all right, Um so I cook a lot with those,
But um, I cook a lot with poblanos, anaheims, Chipotle's
lapenos serranos and Chipotle is it you just threw me off.
(20:24):
It's chapolte Chipotle. Chipotle is a smoked tabn euro right, Yeah,
and Ancho is a dried serrano. Ancho is dried poblano
ancho powder. Yeah, that's from Pueblo, Mexico. Uh, Poblanos are
great if you want to make a good chile reno
because they're about the right size and they're really just hardy, thick,
(20:47):
waxy they hold up. Well. Yeah, you mean I are
aficionados of those things of the poblana, know of the chileno.
Oh yeah, find a good one of those. Yeah, you know,
it's funny. In uh college, you know, I worked at
Callie Girl, which I don't think is even a thing anymore.
I know the one in Atlanta Highway Clothes, which was
very it was an institution. Uh. And their chill arena
(21:11):
like a lot of the when you go to some
you know, kind of the cheaper Mexican places that have
like the mini with eight combination dinners, a lot of
times you will find a chill rena which is a
ball of beef wrapped in cheese sitting on top of
a one inch square green bell pepper. I've not seen
that one. Yeah, that was what our chill rena was.
Its basically just meat and cheese. Man, But you want
(21:34):
the real thing, which is stuffed in a real pepper,
and a lot of people use breading unnecessary. I can
have it both ways. It's well, it's supposed to have
some sort of fried wrapper around it, and the breading
is usually too much. The better way to do it
is like a thin omelet, almost like a crepe around it.
(21:54):
Everyone's yeah, good stuff, all right, Well let's back up then, Okay,
back to the bells, which you don't consider peppers evidently, Well,
I mean, as far as you're talking heat, no heat,
but they're great to grill and and I can't say anything.
I can't really go beyond a hall of pen you, oh,
you can't stand the heat. No, So I'm frequently getting
(22:16):
out of the kitchen. But I actually made a New
Year's resolution to eat more hot stuff because I realize,
like I'm such a total worst when it comes to this,
Like you can build up a tolerance, and I have.
I've gotten much better at like eating spicy stuff. But yeah,
if I like habanero is way too hot for me,
(22:36):
it depends on what kind of spice it is. To
a lot of times, I'm more tolerant of some than others.
But I've learned that once you get past that very unpleasant,
painful sensation, there's like a whole new world of tastes
out there. Yeah you know, yeah, good point. Uh. So
the bells are the little squatty squatty dudes. Um they
can be. Uh. I don't know if a lot of
(22:58):
people know this. All the different collars of the bell.
Pepper is the same pepper, the red bell, the green bell,
the yellow bell, the orange bell. It's all the same,
but they taste differently. Yes, because there it's how long
they're ripened. So what the green one is ripen or
harvested first? Wait a minute, Wait a minute, it's all
the same pepper. Read an that's why you'll get a
(23:18):
red pepper that still has a little green buddy, like
a little patch of green. Wait a minute, hold on,
So you didn't know this? No? Wow, all right, well
that didn't happen much for real. Yeah, well that's great man,
thank you for teaching us. So the green peppers is
picked first. That's why they're less expensive to um, and
(23:40):
they are a little bitter and they are not nearly
as sweet. Then you have yellow than orange than red
as they ripen, and that's why the red is most expensive.
And it's because it's the most mature delicious. It is delicious,
and they are sweet and kind of fruity um, but
smoked one. We're not smoked on um roasted yes. Oh,
(24:04):
I do it all the time. And then you just
peel the skin off. Yeah, what I do. This article
says to do it in the oven. I either put
it on the grill I do with fire, yeah, or
just on the stove. I'll just put it on the
gas stove. That's a conviction. You just put like an
old piece note paper on its pepper over there. Yeah,
(24:27):
I'll just throw the red pepper on the fire until
it's all black, and then I throw it in a
paper bag. I don't do paper because I don't usually plastic. Yeah,
I'll just put it in like a grocery store bag.
That seems carcinogenic. Uh no, I don't think so we'll
find out. Yeah, check back with me in twenty years. Well,
(24:48):
because you then you run into the sink and wash
all that char off of it. So I don't think
it's coming to contact what you're eating with the plastic, right,
So you use the sink huh yeah, just because it's
really hot to the touch. Still. Well that that's the
other thing that I noticed in this article. It says
leave it for like fifteen minutes, which seems smart. I
don't ever have time for that, So I just put
(25:08):
it under the cold water, get all the seeds in
the membrane and the skin off you, and then slice
it up and throw it in a salad. It is delicious,
very delicious. Uh. But the okay, the red pepper has
more because it's matured longer, has eleven times more beta
carotene than green and one and a half times more
(25:29):
vitamin C, so they're healthier. That's what you're pain for
the beta carotene. That's right, big money in bata. Uh.
And then you can also have chocolate, purple and even
white bell peppers. And this is now you're just lying now.
I think those are just different varieties. Though I don't
(25:49):
think those are like how mature they are, Like the
white ones are grown in the dark or something like that.
I don't know. I have no idea. Um, the pimento
paprika are both where you they come from? Red bells thought,
and paprika is well, then how is how is that?
How does that have? Any kind of paprika has a
(26:10):
little bit of heat to it, doesn't it? Uh? No, No,
I'm thinking of cayenne pepper. Yeah, cayenne is made from
hot red chilies, and paprika is just smoked unless it's
Hungarian paprika, and that's sweeter and that's not smoked. So
if you see a recipe that says paprika, you should
probably know whether it's smoked or Hungarian. And if not,
(26:32):
I would probably just go with Hungarian. Oh you think, well,
unless you just know you want a smoky flavor. This
has been quite a roller. Banana peppers very mild, pepper
chini's very mild. You get those on your subway sandwich?
(26:53):
Yeah yeah, or like as a side on a Papa
John's pizza. Oh yeah, something like that. That's right, I
knew I've seen that. And then of course the best
one of all, the Paublano pepper, right uh. And then
the pimento, which we just mentioned, and that is a
variety of the red bell I think, and that's what
they put in olives and cheese. What about the hot guys,
(27:14):
seattlen't mess with them that much. But yeah, like we said,
there's lapeno serrano, havaniro, Chippotle, So it is chipotle? Yeah,
what do you think it was? We were saying chipolte?
Are were you saying Chipotle. I was saying Chipotlewa said that,
and then Anaheim Anaheim, Yeah. I think some people transpose
(27:37):
the L and say chapolte. Yeah, they definitely do. I
got confused. I know how to say it right, but
earlier I was like, wait, they didn't sound right. Yeah. Uh.
And then of course you have the delicious Tai chilies
or bird's eye chilies, and those are really good and
super hot, and they are small and thin but pack
(27:58):
of punch. So normally the rule of thought them is, uh,
thin long ones that are red are going to be
your hottest, right, But there's exceptions to those rules, which
is the Scotch bonnet. Scotch bonnet is like it's like even,
it's like more pumpkin shaped. It's like hobbin narrow, but
(28:20):
it's even. It's less land or shaped and more pumpkin shaped.
And I think it's like a yellow yellow orange, and
it's very hot, very frequently found in like Jamaican cuisine.
The Scotch bonnet. Uh, if you dry the pepper out
and you have like the encho pepper, the chipotle dried
stuff that we're talking about, it's gonna be hotter. Get
(28:41):
that in mind. Some people who like peppers will just
put them in a food dehydrator and eat them like that. Yeah,
or just let them just dry out in you're in
the sun, if you're slack, if you're a hippie, chuck.
We also said that. So if you're a scientist, you
say this pepper is shape a and as a Scoville
rating of five trillion, right, Um, then you've just described
(29:05):
a pepper to another scientist. They know what you're talking about.
But there's a something called the Chili Pepper Institute. It's
an institute that's associated with the University of New Mexico.
And New Mexico, by the way, is the the foremost
domestic producer of chili peppers in the United States, thanks
to a man named Fabian Garcia, who was a pioneer
(29:26):
in cultivating peppers here in the United States. He released
his first variety, the New Mexico number nine. I thought
you're gonna say, his first album Mambo number five. Yeah. Um,
But he's like known as the father of chili peppers
in the US, Yeah, the North American chili and in
India they are. Um, they're the world's largest producer of
(29:49):
chili's by far. Yeah. Um. But there's so there's another
way to describe them beyond shape, color, and heat. And
the Chili Pepper Institute came up with this. It's for
the heat profile. And basically there's five components to the
heat profile. Um, there's the heat, the Scoville heat unit
to it. Yeah. Um. Then there's how fast it hits.
(30:13):
Like you were saying that guy who ate some ghost chilies,
um that they were kinda like it took a minute
to come on. There's some peppers that hit like immediately.
So that would be the second descriptor the second component. Um.
The third would be whether it lingers or dissipates quickly
or how fast it dissipates. Eventually it's going to dissipate
(30:33):
you hope, yeah, and then come and burn the next
day coming out the other end, yeah, you know yeah uh.
And then the fourth one is, um, where it's sensed,
like is it in the throat? Is it on your tongue?
Is it in the roof of your mouth? Where does
it attack? Basically? And then the last one is whether
it's flat or sharp? So flat is say, um, I
(30:56):
saw and I think that that New Yorker article, or
may be the Smithsonian one that sent you. UM flat
is where it's like your whole tongue is just coated
in the sensation of heat, whereas UM sharp is where
it feels like little hot needles in your mouth or
something like that. And the preference in America is for
a flat sensation, whereas Asian countries tend to prefer the
(31:20):
sharp sensation, like the tai chillies. Yes, interesting sharp, that's right. Uh.
Do you like hot Asian food? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Um,
I like curries and stuff like that. Nothing too hot though.
I mean like, I'm still a pretty big wus and
I'm also like comfortable enough with myself that I don't
(31:41):
feel the need to show off or accepted dare of
course not no, So yeah, I don't need that hottest stuff,
but I will sometimes. If you're still accepting food related
dares in your late thirties or forties, then you don't
know you should seek some help. Did you read about
that guy, Ted bust Or Besser. Oh, he was in
(32:02):
the New Yorker article. He that's exactly what he does. He's,
you know, thirties, He's on YouTube help and he accepts
um challenges. Food challenges, so people will send him like
the most disgusting thing they can find, and then he
eats it on on air. But one of the things
that he eats are like really hot peppers. Has become
kind of like a a de facto pepper judge because
(32:26):
there is this whole community out there. Well, we'll talk
about that after we take a break. How about that,
you know, stop you so, Chuck. We kind of teased
(32:49):
that there's a there's a community of chili pepper ficionados
out there, tough, tough guys and women. Yes, yeah, I
meant that in the non gender specific Yeah. And they
range from um, just people who like to eat them,
to people who make their own hot sauce to people
who are competing by growing cultivators. Yeah, the hottest peppers
(33:12):
on the planet literally, and they it gets pretty dicey.
They get um, very competitive and very snippy. From what
I read. Yeah, there's about you know, um, the legitimacy
of the heat that they claim. Yeah. So there's again
a really great New Yorker article called the fire Eaters
from I think a year or two back, and it
(33:33):
gives a really great outsider's view of this community. And
it is very snippy. One of the problems is there's
no official central body that says this is the hottest
pepper on the planet. Well, Guinness does, Guinness doesn't. A
lot of people defer to Guinness, but some other people are,
like Guinness says, no, they're they're just they're dilettants. What
(33:55):
we need is a governing body that's dedicated only to
chili peppers, well not Guinness, right, yeah. And one reason
why is because it changes, like people are cultivating these things.
There could be a new hot, hottest pepper every three months,
and Guinness isn't gonna stay on top of that, right,
So there it's kind of like, why are you being
(34:16):
talking to those guys. So some people do differ to
Guinness because it is the closest thing that they have
to um a judgment saying this is the world's hottest
people just like we're saying that. But um, there's no
organizing central body that that is dedicated to judging which
is the hottest chili pepper, and there should be there.
(34:37):
According to these people, they could use it, of course
they think the government should supply it, but they can't
even decide on whether that the hottest pepper in the
world should be it's peak or what averages it's mean,
So right now, um Guinness goes by the mean, and
as it stands in the world, the hottest chili pepper
(34:58):
as of August two th is called the Carolina Reaper. Yeah,
the HP twenty two b in h seven out of
rock Kill, South Carolina, and the Carolina Reaper has an
average an average. Remember that UM red Savenia Habaniro had
five hundred and seventy thousand Scoville heat units. Yes, this
(35:19):
one averages one million, five hundred and sixty nine thousand,
three hundred Scoville heat units. That's right, and a peak
of over two point two million. YEA and hats off
to Ed Curry of pucker Butt Pepper Company and uh
Fort Mill. He's He's a very controversial pepper grower. He is.
He blended. The original cross breed was between a ghost pepper,
(35:40):
which was the previous hottest pepper introduced to the North
America in two thousand, uh the infamous ghost pepper, and
then he uh crossbreeded that with bread that with a
red Habaniro. So the the boot Jilokia is the ghost pepper.
It's from India and from two thousand seven it was
(36:01):
the reigning champ and from before that was that Red
Savinia from two thousand and seven. Again, that's as far
as Guinness is concerned. Um, but there are peppers out there.
There's the um so, what's the scorpion one? The Trinidad
scorpion Butch t Yeah, so that was actually grown by
some guys in Australia who crossed a Trinidad scorpion which
(36:26):
is already very hot with a pepper that was grown
by a guy named Butch Taylor in I think Mississippi.
He's right outside of that big on this, as it
turns out, yeah, big time. Um. I think the thing
is like, if there's people who listen to like Front
too four two and go boar hunting, if there's a
larger population of them and that country, that that country
(36:47):
is going to be more likely to be into eating
hot peppers. What's Front two four two? They're like an
industrial band? What does that mean about me? Because I've
never even heard of it. You don't need hot hot pepper? Okay? Uh.
There are some who claim, in fact grow in southern California.
Says I've had I had a pepper once that was
(37:10):
over three million. But I don't even publish that stuff,
he says, because it's a fluke. Right, So so that's
the that's the question, like, should that one be considered
the world's hottest pepper or should that plant have to
that species consistently have to put out something at three million? Yeah,
it doesn't matter. Well, that's another question entirely. You know,
(37:31):
can't we just I know they get specific about it
and they want to do, but it seems like we
can just say all of these are very hot, very
very hot. You're welcome. Yeah, I don't know. It's scary stuff.
If you ask me, it is, Um Christopher Guests should
do a mockumentary about pepper hotheads. It's right for it,
all right. So let's say you want to pick out
(37:54):
a pepper at a grocery store, look for firm skin
for super bright colors, which I don't know. I'm pretty
down on produce and big box grocery stores. But if
you go to a farmer's market, and especially like a
local farmer's market, you're gonna see weird shaped, super super
(38:17):
bright colored peppers. Yeah, weird shaped is right. Remember, Yeah,
we've talked about this before. Grocery stores won't sell ones
that are perfectly awesome and maybe even better tasting because
they look weird. Right, that bell pepper looks like Richard
Nixon throw it in the trash. Yeah, and it's like,
I'm not a crook. Um. The longer they ripe and
(38:37):
the hotter they get, so like you said, the red ones, Um,
if the red ones still have a little green, they're
not fully ripe yet, so they probably won't be as hot.
But that's that's the case with a bell probably anyway.
So you're not looking for heat, right, looking for sweet Um.
If you are cooking with peppers. Uh, it says in
here like be sure to wash your hands. But what
(38:59):
you really need to do, if you're serious, is wear
gloves where, um, where doctors what are they called rubber gloves? Yeah,
rubber gloves, um, because that is truly the only way. Like,
if you come into contact with your fingers and that
membrane or those seeds, you can wash your hands ten
times and you forget and like the next day you
(39:23):
will get an eyebooger out and you'll be like, what
in the world my eyes on fire? You take your
contact and you go to put them in the next
I can't imagine. I cooked one night some piea and
you some hot peppers and did not wear gloves, and
I went peepee later. No, I didn't think about it,
(39:43):
and I had a speaking of syphilis burning sensation down below.
It was bad. That's how they simulated for medical students.
Really it was bad. So I learned the hard way.
I just got a box of those night is it
nitrate gloves? Nitrate or nitrite? And I explodes the other
(40:05):
one's fine, I think, well, I put them in the kitchen.
I also wear a painter's respirator. What kind of peppers
are you working with? The you know, the hot stuff
like ghost peppers. No, but I cook with hobby arrows
and stuff sometimes, and it's like it's nuclear. The fumes are.
It's like if you're over the sink clean and the mountain,
you're breathing it in, you'll you'll find yourself, or at
(40:25):
least I do, coughing and burning. So I'll wear the
respirator in my club. So um you mean? And I
would juice sometimes, and every once in a while she'd
put like a pepper in there, like a hall of
peen you and it would just turn the kitchen into
like like a tear gas bomb had gone off. It's crazy.
It kids everywhere. It does because these things are basically
(40:48):
vaporized and they just spread so easily through the air
and it definitely gives it a kick. Um. Oh, if
you want to store peppers, um, like we said, you
can dry them out and they'll keep for a long time. Uh,
don't keep you don't want to wash them. You want
to just put them unwashed into your fridge. Yeah, true,
(41:10):
and they'll just keep just regular peppers. Peppers will keep
for a long time. It's not something that goes bad
very quickly. But you can freeze them if you slice
them and put them on a baking tray in the freezer.
Then you can collect them and just throw them in
a bag and you can keep them for like a year. Uh.
But I don't see why you freeze peppers. Just buy
the mountain neat and cook with them or pickle them.
(41:32):
That's great. Pickled peppers are wonderful. I can just eat
those straight. I don't like pickled things, so I'm not
into it. But yeah, it's it's so good for you.
Pickling pickled foods are so good for you, there's so
many health benefits. I'll you'll eat other healthy things that
I enjoy. But how do you not like pickles? Stuff? Like,
I could eat pickled any you could cut your finger
(41:54):
off and pickle it. I'd probably eat it. How does
anyone not like anything? But I mean, like, what about it?
You don't like the tartness, No, just the the taste
anything pickled, like a pickled pickle, sour kraut. Oh you
don't like sour krau, hate sauer kraud. I guess I
could have seen that. I hate. I hate pickled so
(42:14):
much that I have to ask and rest, like when
I go to a pub and have like a burger
and fries, to leave the pickle off, because invariably they
will put the pickle down soaking into the French fries
in the bun, and it will ruin that for me. Wow,
you hate pickles. That might hate pickles that much? Well,
all the pickles that you get on the side from
now Okay, well Emily eats the pickles, you can arm
(42:35):
wrestle her for them. Okay, that's fine, that's a deal. Um.
But when I said you shouldn't you know just buy
the amount. If you're growing pickles or I'm sorry, growing peppers.
Got me on pickles, pickled peppers, then you might end
up with a lot of peppers. And that's why you
might want to fickle them or pickle them if you're
into that. Because we grew peppers one year and they
were easy to grow and bountiful. Yeah, pepper plant goes. Yeah,
(42:58):
that equals a lot of peppers. I guess we should
talk about growing them a little bit. Huh. I guess.
So they're perennials, so that means they stick around. Well,
it depends on where you live. Yeah, if it's cold,
you might grow them as annuals. Right, they're pretty flexible. Um,
you can start them as seeds ten weeks prior to
the first frost. You want to germinate them in little trays.
(43:21):
First you soaked the seeds for a couple of days.
Then you germinate them with a little bit of starter
ten weeks prior to frost. After the last frost comes
and goes, you can start to harden them by moving
them outside a couple hours at a time and talk
to them, say this is good for you. Right, then
you shake them takes a couple of weeks, um a
(43:43):
few hours each day more until they are hard and ready, right,
and then they start to grow. You want to fertilize them.
When the peppers grow out and turn hard, you can
cut them. And when you do, you want to cut
some stem because it extends their shelf life, and then
you have peppers. You can also just go to the
(44:04):
store and buy some peppers. Yeah, if you're in the
garden garden, yeah, if not, or I've just grown from seed. Man,
it seems like such a nightmare to me. Well, it's
for people who have time and what our hobbyists. But
I also get like if it's a very like if
it's an heirloom something or just something you're not going
to find anywhere. With peppers, I mean, sure there are
(44:26):
some like if you want to buy the Carolina Reaper,
you can get packs of those seeds for like ten
bucks or something. Right, You're not gonna find those at
any store. So I get growing those from seed, But
like growing like a squash plant from seed, it's like,
what are you doing, man, You've got you should have
better things to do with your time than that a
weaker squash last year from seed? What are you doing, man,
(44:48):
we have a garden, right, but you can just buy
like the seedlings. Yeah, you could do that. Okay. Are
you saying why do people garden? No? I love gardening. Okay,
I'm just saying growing from seed a plant. Like, if
you like growing from seed, you should get a seed
catalog and find something that you can't find elsewhere. That's
(45:09):
what I'm saying. I have a very strong opinion on
growing things from to each their own with everything but gardening,
but gardening, we we use start our plants a lot too.
Not everything is from seed. Because you're saying, sensible people,
but do you do you see my point? I guess
Do you get seed catalogs not catalogs? I don't think,
(45:31):
but we buy buy seeds online. You should get your
hands on sea catalog Yeah. Yeah, I can't remember the
name of the company. That sounds like good toilet book reading.
Yes it is. It's just so. Yes, it's very delightful.
It makes you so excited for spring. H Off label
uses of peppers will say you can eat them or
(45:53):
you can rub them on your pain parts. Yeah, because
remember they overload your nose susceptor. That's right, can lower
your blood pressure. They can be antiquagulants. Like, I think
that's one and the same. Think about it. If it
thins the blood, it's going to also like lower your
blood pressure. True, I would think. Okay, it's also been
(46:15):
shown chuck, it lowers bad cholesterol, not even not just
any cholesterol. It lowers your bad cholesterol. And not only
does it lower the cholesterol present in your blood, I
think it attracts it, right because remember it's fat soluble
um and then it gets fleshed out of the system.
It actually removes the build up of bad cholesterol plaque
(46:36):
in your arteries. Man, this stuff is it makes me
want to eat more peppers. Already eat quite a bit
of peppers. I need to eat more, I think. Uh.
In the future, they hope to use it for um
cancer prevention, U stroke heart attack prevention, right, you know,
I guess it already works. Is that if it's lowering
your blood blood pressure, that's what I got from that too.
(46:59):
But the cancer or it's its own thing. They found
that that cap sasan itself basically attacks tumors. Wow, I
mean that's Are you upset about the growing from seed tirade? Oh? No,
I don't care. What like it was directed at me. Yeah,
it didn't mean for it to be, but it took
(47:20):
a pretty hard turn at the end. There no right
to your right to your front door. I don't care
right to your garden door? No, no, no no. Uh.
We have an article called ken Ghost peppers kill you
on our website. It cannot it's not good. Um, but
apparently three pounds um the peppers can kill you. Is
(47:41):
that right? Yeah? How like what's the mode of death?
I don't know. They don't say. That's why it's not
a good article. Well, so these these pain receptors, the
um t r P, I mean it's a toxin cap
sasan is trpv one um. They're also responsible for regulating
your body heat. Helping regulate your body heat. So I
(48:03):
wonder if you have like a heat stroke or something
like that. I don't know. I would just say it's
a If it's a toxin and you eat too much
of any toxin, you could die. Yeah. But but there's
you know, you die from like some toxin slow your
respiration and you stop breathing from lack of eye you
know what. I bet you had something to do with respiration,
because if you are in a hot pepper eating contest,
(48:23):
one thing that will talk about is their throat swelling
and having a hard time breathing. That'd be my guess.
I think they uh. I think there was a Science
Daily article originally that said that. So there was a
speaking of ghost peppers up until last year. In two
thousand and fourteen, there was a restaurant in Grantham, Lincolnshire,
(48:45):
I take two to be in England, probably called Bindy
it was. The restaurant was named Bindy. It was an
Indian restaurant, UM, and it had a curry called the
Widower that used twenty ghost peppers among a ton of
other ones. And currently um they had sold like five
six hundred of them and like about three quarters of
(49:06):
the people finished it managed to finish it, which yeah,
if you think like the ghost pepper that was like
the one that got all the press in two thousand seven.
I think what's remarkable is that people that are ordering
this are probably have a very high tolerance anyway, and
if they're not able to finish it, that says a
lot exactly. So that's chili peppers. Everybody go forth and
(49:27):
eat some. You said that it doesn't give you ulcers,
and in fact, it actually helps with cases of ulcers. Right,
that's right, and that amazing. It is. Okay, So if
you want to know more about chili peppers, you can
type that word into the search bar how stuff works
dot com and it will bring up this article. And
I said, uh, search pops as temple listener. Man, I'm
(49:52):
gonna call this a rarely granted shout out. We get
request a lot for shout outs and we couldn't do
them all at the was our show would be called
shout outs, you should know. But this one was from
a fourteen year old girl who sounded very sweet. So
I'm reading it. Hi, guys, I'm a fourteen year old
girl who's been listening for a long time, and I
(50:12):
wanted to say thanks for the time that you spend
to make it smarter. It's been really fun for my
sister Anna and I uh to listen to your podcast
before we go to sleep. However, she's leaving for college
soon to study studio art, and I'll be all alone
when I listen to you, guys. So if it isn't
too much to ask, could you give her a shout
out and tell her that she is an awesome sister
(50:33):
and will be missed. Uh, Sarah, you could tell her
that yourself too. By the way you should express your emotions.
I don't like to talk. You can also say to
my brother's Jonathan, Stephen and Tommy that they are okay.
Too many kids are in this family. It sounds like
one five. Uh if you oh, she said, no, don't
(50:54):
mention that's sixth one. I'm just kidding. Uh. If you
do this, then you guys will be the best podcasters ever,
not like you aren't already. Actually, Anna just sent an
email or maybe it's Anna to you guys last night
about hula hoops and uh, if you could put both
our emails on the air, that would be the best.
I'm not gonna do that, but I did write her back,
(51:17):
so um, this is a secret from annas it would
be a big surprise. So uh, Sarah to Anna, Anna,
good luck at college. You will be missed. You're a
great sister. That's so nice. Chuck and the brothers Jonathan,
Stephen and Tommy, you guys are okay, man, that was nice,
very kind of you. You never know. Uh, Well, if
(51:38):
you want to see if you can tuget Chuck's heart
strings give you your best shot good luck. You can
tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you
Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff
podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has always
joined us at at home on the web. Stuff you
Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
(52:01):
production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H
Hi, everybody, Chuck here, Happy Saturday. Do you want to
know how Chili Peppers work? Because we did and we learned.
This is from September. How Chili Peppers work. It's hot stuff.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
(00:22):
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Thurs,
Charles W Chuck Bryant and Jerry and that makes this
stuff you should know. That was so good to quote
the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the band they apparently used
(00:44):
them at Guantanamo Bay to torture prisoners. Really yeah, that
surprises me. I know usually that's like I've heard of
stories like that, but usually it's some kind of dark
metal or something like super Darling vocal band. Of might
say abrasive, some might. I think it's very soothing to
hear death metal. Supposedly there's a study out there, the
(01:05):
head of ridiculously small study population that found that it's
calming has a calling influence metal music does paid for
about the Metal Association of North America. The Skandinavia. Uh yeah,
I'm kind of surprised they played the Chili Peppers since, uh,
it's pretty easy on the ears. Isn't it Well one
of the songs was California Cation. The other later stuff
(01:28):
isn't as good. I could go a little crazy with
that one. I'll talk what were you going to quote?
I was gonna say give it away, give it away
now or something like that, or fight like a brave.
I haven't heard that one. That's early stuff. You could
just say like under the Bridge downtown. Yeah, I ate
(01:49):
a chili pepper. I actually read his biography. I guess
it was an autobiography Anthony Keatis, because I was he
writing about himself. Yeah. I was just going through a
kick where I was reading music autobiographies of for just
rock star stories. Didn't you recommend the best? Which one
(02:09):
was it? Uh? There's one, um quintessential one. I can't
remember what it's called, the Quintessential Crew. Yeah, just look
at I mean it's that's not an autobiography, that's just
a biography. Yeah, but that one's really good. The Slash
one is good and the Keytest one is good. Man,
he that guy. He had troubles, oh yeah, just bad
(02:30):
drug troubles and woman troubles over and over and over.
But he's good now. Good for him. Yeah, welcome back.
To the fray, Anthony Keynes. That's what I say. So
we're not talking about the red hot chili peppers. We're
talking about red hot chili peppers, right, not the right
We're talking about chili peppers. Depending on where you are
(02:52):
in the world, c h I l I peppers or
c h I L E peppers or just chili's. Yeah,
you could say that. I think a lot of chefs
just call them chilies. Well, yeah, because they're like, they
don't waste words. No, they don't say peppers. It's a
couple of extra syllables. Yeah, exactly, No, chef, give me
some of those chilies. Uh. It is the bell pepper
(03:16):
and the celery stalk and the onion is part of
the trinity of I guess you would call it Nolans cooking. Sure,
the bell pepper is a chili pepper. It's just um,
a non hot chili pepper. But it's still the same thing. Um.
(03:37):
And it turns out that we get that terminology chili.
It actually was used by the Aztecs or the Triple
Alliance and Mesoamerica, the Triple Indy's the Triple Alliance prior
to the arrival of Columbus, and it was Columbus himself
where we get the the misnomer chili pepper, because Columbus,
(03:58):
he's a big dummy. Can that guy get anything right?
So he comes across the chili pepper and decides that
it must be a relative of the black pepper, with
which he and the rest of Europe are already very familiar.
So he calls it the chili pepper because he hears
up in Meico they call it chili's, so what the
Triple Alliance calls it. So that's where it came from.
(04:19):
Chili peppers, but it has no relation whatsoever to the
chili or the pepper. The black pepper um and it's
been around. It's actually one of the oldest domesticated crops
in the America's actually, yeah, it started out in South
America about six thousand years ago. I saw nine thousand,
let's stay between five and twelve. Uh. And they don't
(04:42):
know whether it was Bolivia or Brazil. There's a heated
debate in the pepper community on the country of origin.
But they do know that birds are the ones who
dispersed them in. Birds can't feel heat in their mouth,
so they carry them around and propagate the seeds, and
uh then Columbus of cour brought them to Europe and
that's how things spread. That's why you can use hot
(05:04):
sauce or chili pepper spray or something like that on
your bird seed to deter squirrels. Yeah, because the birds
are fine. Yeah, but the squirrels squirrels around going And
it says here the birds can't digest pepper seeds. But
nobody can really digest pepper seeds. If I can't whole,
I totally can't know you can't. I will show you
(05:25):
right now. I think you can show me your stool.
Uh No, we can't digest them either, because we don't
digest seeds that aren't chewed because they're covered in cellulose
and it just goes straight through to our poop. Exactly
same with corn. Yeah, because that is a seed. It is.
I'm glad you finally said that. Somebody needed to say it.
(05:48):
I think that's one of the trendy facts. Don't you
think that corn is a seed? Yeah? Yeah, probably. It
seems like I saw that all over the internet. It's
pretty hot right now. Corn and poop, it's a hot topic.
So um, I did it don't be dumb on that.
On hot topics van corn and you pop. Yeah. See
(06:09):
so um Columbus brings the stuff back and it spreads
like crazy like syphilis. Yeah, because think about this, Um,
chili peppers, we're we are native to the America's and
we're unknown outside of the America's until about five hundred
or so years ago. Now they're grown in just about
(06:31):
every country in the world. Um, there's all different types
of varieties. Um. But it turns out that there's twenty
five wild species and five domesticated species. And one of
the um noteworthy things about chili peppers is most of
the time, when humans domesticated a wild crop, they would
(06:54):
stop using the wild version of it because it was
just so far inferior to the domestic hated versions. Not
so with with um chilies. Wild chilies are just as prized,
if not more prized, than the domesticated ones. They're delicious.
So there's five species, chuck. And by the way, chili
peppers blowing to the night shade family with potatoes, tomatoes,
(07:16):
goaji berries, eggplants in night shade and um, the five
species are fun to say. Yeah, I wasn't even gonna
do it, but I encourage you too, Okay, Uh kept
cicum and you um kept ciccum chins kept siccumb fruitescents
(07:37):
kept scumb, but cadam and kept siccum. Pubescence does have
little hairs on him. I saw that one coming. So
those are the five families. H Peppers are generally hot,
although we'll get into all that with the varieties. Like
you said the bells, everyone knows bells aren't very hot, right,
(07:58):
but um, what you're talking about with heat is what's
called their pungency. And the heat actually uh comes from
alkaloids present in the peppers called cap sasan yes, which
we talked about in December pepper pepper Spray episode, because
that's the cap that's what they're using in pepper spray.
If you didn't listen to it, go check it out.
(08:19):
It's a good one. But yeah, that's kind of funny
to think about defense. Self defense tool is really just
uh canned hot pepper. Yeah, because that stuff can be
It works. Yeah, it really does work. Um. And with
with the the pungency of a pepper, most people think
that it's found in the seeds. That's actually a myth.
(08:42):
Well it is found in the seeds. It's not housed
in the seeds, right, So the seeds are attached to
the pepper itself through something called the placenta. It's a membrane,
that white stuff that's inside of a pepper, right, and
that's where the cap sasan um is stored. Yeah. Um,
And since the seeds are attached to the membrane, a
(09:03):
lot of that stuff makes it way its way to
the seeds. But if you really want the high heat,
you eat the membrane. If you want want the high heat,
just eat the whole thing. I D seed and D
membrane mine. But uh, if you're looking for heat, then
just don't even sweat it. Literally, don't sweat it. That's yeah.
That's like the second at least pun that you've made.
(09:25):
Oh yeah, yeah, well was the first one? Something was
they were both accidental hot. I can't remember what it was. Well,
those are just words. No, it was perfect, It was
really great. Uh. So the pain is actually not coming
from your taste buds because they don't feel pain. It's
coming from pain receptors in your mouth, and it sends
(09:47):
a message to your to your brain saying this is
super hot. I wouldn't eat that much unless you like it. Right.
It's the same pain receptors that UM tell you that, say,
the sip of coffee you just took is too hot,
or like something is thermally too hot. It's triggered by
CAP sason. It's the t r p v one receptor
(10:10):
and that triggers the release of a neurotransmitter called substance
P and that's cap sason can also block. What's crazy
is yes, so the it's what when we'll talk about
it a little more later. But cap sason is used
as a topical pain reliever, right like Shaquille O'Neal knows
that he is he uh I think yeah? Um, so
(10:36):
cap sasan If you rub it on the skin, it
goes to those trp v one receptors and basically overloads
them so thoroughly that they're no longer able to transmit
the sensation of pain in that area. So it's a
local anesthetic. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, uh, And lots
of other health benefits we'll talk about. Peppers are great
(10:56):
for you. Peppers are super Uh. They do not cause
ulcers that is a myth um and in fact, they
protect the stomach lining or can and they can also
thin the blood, so you need to watch out for
that if you are on an anticoagulant. Yeah. I don't
know if they say that on the prescription or not.
But the pepper prescription no prescribed. It's in Alabania today.
(11:24):
Uh No, the anticoagulant prescription. Of course it might. But
if you are in a contest or just at dinner
and your mouth becomes inflamed, um, don't well, you can
drink water. I think it provides a temporary respite. I
don't know if it even does that. It does for me.
It basically smooths the stuff around and throughout your mouth. Yea,
(11:48):
which is not good. What you want is something fatty
like milk, Yeah, because cap sasan dissolves in the presence
of fats or like um, if you eat a lot
of Mexican food or Indian food, Um, that that sour
cream and that yogurt is a nice way to smooth
that out. That's what it's there for. Baby. Well, that
in taste and in flavor and texture and everything else. Yeah,
(12:12):
I guess. So. Yeah, it's not like they're, like you said,
some sour cream because this is too hot, but it
definitely helps. I read an article actually with a guy
who was in a contest and he was a hot
pepper guy and he described I think he ate like
three ghost peppers just in twenty seconds, and he was
(12:34):
fine at first. Then it got hot like in it
not in his mouth but in his throat, and then um,
he just kept going through waves like he said it
would go away, and I thought it was good, and
he was like an hour later, it felt like a
red hot burning nickel on my stern um and it
was just moving its way down, I guess. And then
he said he felt jubilation, like exhilaration, which we'll talk
(12:57):
about this one of the effects of peppers that can
you know, pick up your mood. But he said he
was just like I felt like he was on cocaine. Weird. Yeah,
because they trigger a release of endorphins exactly, so you
can get a runners high or some sort of high
off of eating peppers, which is why some people eat peppers.
They really makes them feel great. Yeah, I guess this
(13:19):
guy wasn't a runner. He must have just done some
cocaine before his line, right, that was his go too.
And um, so you said that birds are immune to
the effects of peppers, and they also spread the seed
by pooping it out right. Um, mammals are not immune
to the effects of it, including humans. And apparently humans
are the only mammals that purposefully eat peppers. And it's
(13:41):
been called a form of benign masochism. Oh yeah, interesting,
but it makes sense if um. And the reason why
they think peppers have that kind of burning thing is
is to protect itself, to ward off mammals from eating it. Um.
But the the idea that we can and get some
sort of rush from it, it's kind of counterintuitive if
(14:04):
you think about it as far as evolution goes from
the pepper standpoint. Sure, yeah, because that encourages people to
keep eating you. Yeah, that's a good point. All right, Well,
let's take a break here and we'll come back and
talk a little bit about how the heat is measured
in a hot pepper. You know, stop you all right?
(14:39):
I guess we need to talk about Wilbur Scoville, Mr
Scoville doctor. He's a pharmacist. Yeah, but I wondered if
he was a doctor. I think he got an honorary doctorate.
He deserved one. You count those? Uh? Sure? All right,
probably depends on where it's from what it's for, but
sure I would, of course I want to be like
(15:00):
you can call me doctor Mr Clark, Dr Mr. Uh.
He was a pharmacist, like you said, who developed, um,
something called the Scoville organ elliptic test in nineteen twelve,
and uh, what is this a hilarious name for what
it is. It is kind of weird, isn't it. You
(15:20):
should just call it the chili test or something. It
just made me laugh like a goon a. Well, previous
to this test, um, the only test was basically just
to have people eat them and ask them how hot.
It's pretty hot? Okay, that's a pretty hot pepper. Give
me some milk fat, right, technically pork fat whatever. You
just need a slab a fat and get rid of
(15:42):
it real quick. Yeah. They said chocolate too will help you. Well,
it's a fatty yeah, full of lipids. I think that's
people just like the chocolate with their hot stuff. Uh So,
Scofield says, there's got to be a better way, and
he says, why don't we devise a test where we
have people peppers and ask them out hot It is?
Pretty much? But let's do it in a little bit
(16:03):
different way. Let's keep feeding them peppers that are more
diluted until they can't feel heat any longer, and just
make it a little more organized and formal. So the Scoville,
the Scoville heat unit is what it comes up with, right,
So for example, of bell pepper has a zero, not hot,
but say Hobban euro some types of hobby euro peppers
(16:25):
can get up to like five hundred thousand UM. I
think the red something, Oh, what is it? I'm sorry,
the red Savennia haban euro pepper got up to five
D seventy thousand Scoville heat units. It's very hot. And
what that means is that it would take five hundred
and seventy thousand cups of water to dilute one cup
(16:46):
of extract from the red Savinia habban euro and one
shot of milk fat right before before anybody could say
I detect no heat whatsoever. So that's what. Yeah, it's
a tremendous amount of war. And it's not like he
was pouring a whole cup of this stuff into five
hundred and seventy thousand cups of water. It's math. I
think he just used fractions. Yeah, probably, so yeah, you
(17:08):
know a minute to come to that conclusion. I was like,
what kind of vat did this guy have in his yard?
A big one? Uh? So that was the the old
test um. And even though they no longer use that,
they still use that s h U. Scoville heat unit
as the unit of a measure, which I think is
a nice little tip of the cap. It is because
it could have changed it. Wilbert Scoville's ghost is like,
(17:30):
I approve. Uh Now, what they do is use liquid chromatography.
Uh and they've been doing that since about the seventies.
And that's not specific to testing peppers. It's basically just
separating and analyzing compounds of any mixture, right, but you
can target the specific type of compound and in this case,
(17:51):
you're looking for the alkaloid capsation. Yes, and you determine
how many parts per million is present in a given pepper,
and it takes the subjectivity out. Yeah, and it's literally
just measuring the level capsation level in any pepper. But
what's neat is they figured out Scoville is clearly onto
something because they figured out that if you take this
high performance liquid chromatography measurement and multiply the number it
(18:15):
spits out by sixteen, you will come to the Scoville
unit by a factor of sixteen. Bad, But that's neat
that you can it's not like sixteen seven or something
like that, or or multiply it by the fact that
you can multiply it by a standard number and come
to the Scoville heat unit each time means he was
(18:36):
doing something right. Something there's something there Scoville way to go.
That sounds like one of the real men of genius
commercials or something, right, I guess. Or else should we
get to some of the types of peppers? Now, are
we there? Yeah? Yeah, I think so, because if you're
a scientist, there's two ways to classify a pepper by
(18:59):
its heat using the Skillville heat unit index, and by
its shape. Yes, and then color. Well, apparently scientists don't
classify them by color. I'm talking about you and me, buddy.
Hotheads were in the kitchen, okay, and we're and we're
looking at peppers, and we're like, look at that red one.
Look at that green wrinkly one. All right, that one's
(19:20):
shape funny. That's a funny shape. That's how we classify
red funny shaped one. It's really hot. Wrinkly or smooth
is another thing you might notice. But you're right, as
far as science is concerned, its heat and shape, and
then the shapes go from shape A to shape I right.
And my favorite descriptor is the lantern shape. I think
(19:41):
that's great. Yeah, that's the hot man euro. Yeah, very
thin skinned, uh and very hot? Yeah? Can you can
you eat peppers? Which I didn't even ask this? I
eat a lot of peppers. Um, My heat tolerance isn't great.
I do like the heat, but I'm a bit of
(20:01):
a whimp. So like, what what kind of pepper do
you normally? Can you eat? Like a Scotch bonnet? Well,
I mean I cook a lot with just bells. Of
course that doesn't care. Sure they do, okay, because they're peppers,
all right, Um so I cook a lot with those,
But um, I cook a lot with poblanos, anaheims, Chipotle's
lapenos serranos and Chipotle is it you just threw me off.
(20:24):
It's chapolte Chipotle. Chipotle is a smoked tabn euro right, Yeah,
and Ancho is a dried serrano. Ancho is dried poblano
ancho powder. Yeah, that's from Pueblo, Mexico. Uh, Poblanos are
great if you want to make a good chile reno
because they're about the right size and they're really just hardy, thick,
(20:47):
waxy they hold up. Well. Yeah, you mean I are
aficionados of those things of the poblana, know of the chileno.
Oh yeah, find a good one of those. Yeah, you know,
it's funny. In uh college, you know, I worked at
Callie Girl, which I don't think is even a thing anymore.
I know the one in Atlanta Highway Clothes, which was
very it was an institution. Uh. And their chill arena
(21:11):
like a lot of the when you go to some
you know, kind of the cheaper Mexican places that have
like the mini with eight combination dinners, a lot of
times you will find a chill rena which is a
ball of beef wrapped in cheese sitting on top of
a one inch square green bell pepper. I've not seen
that one. Yeah, that was what our chill rena was.
Its basically just meat and cheese. Man, But you want
(21:34):
the real thing, which is stuffed in a real pepper,
and a lot of people use breading unnecessary. I can
have it both ways. It's well, it's supposed to have
some sort of fried wrapper around it, and the breading
is usually too much. The better way to do it
is like a thin omelet, almost like a crepe around it.
(21:54):
Everyone's yeah, good stuff, all right, Well let's back up then, Okay,
back to the bells, which you don't consider peppers evidently, Well,
I mean, as far as you're talking heat, no heat,
but they're great to grill and and I can't say anything.
I can't really go beyond a hall of pen you, oh,
you can't stand the heat. No, So I'm frequently getting
(22:16):
out of the kitchen. But I actually made a New
Year's resolution to eat more hot stuff because I realize,
like I'm such a total worst when it comes to this,
Like you can build up a tolerance, and I have.
I've gotten much better at like eating spicy stuff. But yeah,
if I like habanero is way too hot for me,
(22:36):
it depends on what kind of spice it is. To
a lot of times, I'm more tolerant of some than others.
But I've learned that once you get past that very unpleasant,
painful sensation, there's like a whole new world of tastes
out there. Yeah you know, yeah, good point. Uh. So
the bells are the little squatty squatty dudes. Um they
can be. Uh. I don't know if a lot of
(22:58):
people know this. All the different collars of the bell.
Pepper is the same pepper, the red bell, the green bell,
the yellow bell, the orange bell. It's all the same,
but they taste differently. Yes, because there it's how long
they're ripened. So what the green one is ripen or
harvested first? Wait a minute, Wait a minute, it's all
the same pepper. Read an that's why you'll get a
(23:18):
red pepper that still has a little green buddy, like
a little patch of green. Wait a minute, hold on,
So you didn't know this? No? Wow, all right, well
that didn't happen much for real. Yeah, well that's great man,
thank you for teaching us. So the green peppers is
picked first. That's why they're less expensive to um, and
(23:40):
they are a little bitter and they are not nearly
as sweet. Then you have yellow than orange than red
as they ripen, and that's why the red is most expensive.
And it's because it's the most mature delicious. It is delicious,
and they are sweet and kind of fruity um, but
smoked one. We're not smoked on um roasted yes. Oh,
(24:04):
I do it all the time. And then you just
peel the skin off. Yeah, what I do. This article
says to do it in the oven. I either put
it on the grill I do with fire, yeah, or
just on the stove. I'll just put it on the
gas stove. That's a conviction. You just put like an
old piece note paper on its pepper over there. Yeah,
(24:27):
I'll just throw the red pepper on the fire until
it's all black, and then I throw it in a
paper bag. I don't do paper because I don't usually plastic. Yeah,
I'll just put it in like a grocery store bag.
That seems carcinogenic. Uh no, I don't think so we'll
find out. Yeah, check back with me in twenty years. Well,
(24:48):
because you then you run into the sink and wash
all that char off of it. So I don't think
it's coming to contact what you're eating with the plastic, right,
So you use the sink huh yeah, just because it's
really hot to the touch. Still. Well that that's the
other thing that I noticed in this article. It says
leave it for like fifteen minutes, which seems smart. I
don't ever have time for that, So I just put
(25:08):
it under the cold water, get all the seeds in
the membrane and the skin off you, and then slice
it up and throw it in a salad. It is delicious,
very delicious. Uh. But the okay, the red pepper has
more because it's matured longer, has eleven times more beta
carotene than green and one and a half times more
(25:29):
vitamin C, so they're healthier. That's what you're pain for
the beta carotene. That's right, big money in bata. Uh.
And then you can also have chocolate, purple and even
white bell peppers. And this is now you're just lying now.
I think those are just different varieties. Though I don't
(25:49):
think those are like how mature they are, Like the
white ones are grown in the dark or something like that.
I don't know. I have no idea. Um, the pimento
paprika are both where you they come from? Red bells thought,
and paprika is well, then how is how is that?
How does that have? Any kind of paprika has a
(26:10):
little bit of heat to it, doesn't it? Uh? No, No,
I'm thinking of cayenne pepper. Yeah, cayenne is made from
hot red chilies, and paprika is just smoked unless it's
Hungarian paprika, and that's sweeter and that's not smoked. So
if you see a recipe that says paprika, you should
probably know whether it's smoked or Hungarian. And if not,
(26:32):
I would probably just go with Hungarian. Oh you think, well,
unless you just know you want a smoky flavor. This
has been quite a roller. Banana peppers very mild, pepper
chini's very mild. You get those on your subway sandwich?
(26:53):
Yeah yeah, or like as a side on a Papa
John's pizza. Oh yeah, something like that. That's right, I
knew I've seen that. And then of course the best
one of all, the Paublano pepper, right uh. And then
the pimento, which we just mentioned, and that is a
variety of the red bell I think, and that's what
they put in olives and cheese. What about the hot guys,
(27:14):
seattlen't mess with them that much. But yeah, like we said,
there's lapeno serrano, havaniro, Chippotle, So it is chipotle? Yeah,
what do you think it was? We were saying chipolte?
Are were you saying Chipotle. I was saying Chipotlewa said that,
and then Anaheim Anaheim, Yeah. I think some people transpose
(27:37):
the L and say chapolte. Yeah, they definitely do. I
got confused. I know how to say it right, but
earlier I was like, wait, they didn't sound right. Yeah. Uh.
And then of course you have the delicious Tai chilies
or bird's eye chilies, and those are really good and
super hot, and they are small and thin but pack
(27:58):
of punch. So normally the rule of thought them is, uh,
thin long ones that are red are going to be
your hottest, right, But there's exceptions to those rules, which
is the Scotch bonnet. Scotch bonnet is like it's like even,
it's like more pumpkin shaped. It's like hobbin narrow, but
(28:20):
it's even. It's less land or shaped and more pumpkin shaped.
And I think it's like a yellow yellow orange, and
it's very hot, very frequently found in like Jamaican cuisine.
The Scotch bonnet. Uh, if you dry the pepper out
and you have like the encho pepper, the chipotle dried
stuff that we're talking about, it's gonna be hotter. Get
(28:41):
that in mind. Some people who like peppers will just
put them in a food dehydrator and eat them like that. Yeah,
or just let them just dry out in you're in
the sun, if you're slack, if you're a hippie, chuck.
We also said that. So if you're a scientist, you
say this pepper is shape a and as a Scoville
rating of five trillion, right, Um, then you've just described
(29:05):
a pepper to another scientist. They know what you're talking about.
But there's a something called the Chili Pepper Institute. It's
an institute that's associated with the University of New Mexico.
And New Mexico, by the way, is the the foremost
domestic producer of chili peppers in the United States, thanks
to a man named Fabian Garcia, who was a pioneer
(29:26):
in cultivating peppers here in the United States. He released
his first variety, the New Mexico number nine. I thought
you're gonna say, his first album Mambo number five. Yeah. Um,
But he's like known as the father of chili peppers
in the US, Yeah, the North American chili and in
India they are. Um, they're the world's largest producer of
(29:49):
chili's by far. Yeah. Um. But there's so there's another
way to describe them beyond shape, color, and heat. And
the Chili Pepper Institute came up with this. It's for
the heat profile. And basically there's five components to the
heat profile. Um, there's the heat, the Scoville heat unit
to it. Yeah. Um. Then there's how fast it hits.
(30:13):
Like you were saying that guy who ate some ghost chilies,
um that they were kinda like it took a minute
to come on. There's some peppers that hit like immediately.
So that would be the second descriptor the second component. Um.
The third would be whether it lingers or dissipates quickly
or how fast it dissipates. Eventually it's going to dissipate
(30:33):
you hope, yeah, and then come and burn the next
day coming out the other end, yeah, you know yeah uh.
And then the fourth one is, um, where it's sensed,
like is it in the throat? Is it on your tongue?
Is it in the roof of your mouth? Where does
it attack? Basically? And then the last one is whether
it's flat or sharp? So flat is say, um, I
(30:56):
saw and I think that that New Yorker article, or
may be the Smithsonian one that sent you. UM flat
is where it's like your whole tongue is just coated
in the sensation of heat, whereas UM sharp is where
it feels like little hot needles in your mouth or
something like that. And the preference in America is for
a flat sensation, whereas Asian countries tend to prefer the
(31:20):
sharp sensation, like the tai chillies. Yes, interesting sharp, that's right. Uh.
Do you like hot Asian food? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Um,
I like curries and stuff like that. Nothing too hot though.
I mean like, I'm still a pretty big wus and
I'm also like comfortable enough with myself that I don't
(31:41):
feel the need to show off or accepted dare of
course not no, So yeah, I don't need that hottest stuff,
but I will sometimes. If you're still accepting food related
dares in your late thirties or forties, then you don't
know you should seek some help. Did you read about
that guy, Ted bust Or Besser. Oh, he was in
(32:02):
the New Yorker article. He that's exactly what he does. He's,
you know, thirties, He's on YouTube help and he accepts
um challenges. Food challenges, so people will send him like
the most disgusting thing they can find, and then he
eats it on on air. But one of the things
that he eats are like really hot peppers. Has become
kind of like a a de facto pepper judge because
(32:26):
there is this whole community out there. Well, we'll talk
about that after we take a break. How about that,
you know, stop you so, Chuck. We kind of teased
(32:49):
that there's a there's a community of chili pepper ficionados
out there, tough, tough guys and women. Yes, yeah, I
meant that in the non gender specific Yeah. And they
range from um, just people who like to eat them,
to people who make their own hot sauce to people
who are competing by growing cultivators. Yeah, the hottest peppers
(33:12):
on the planet literally, and they it gets pretty dicey.
They get um, very competitive and very snippy. From what
I read. Yeah, there's about you know, um, the legitimacy
of the heat that they claim. Yeah. So there's again
a really great New Yorker article called the fire Eaters
from I think a year or two back, and it
(33:33):
gives a really great outsider's view of this community. And
it is very snippy. One of the problems is there's
no official central body that says this is the hottest
pepper on the planet. Well, Guinness does, Guinness doesn't. A
lot of people defer to Guinness, but some other people are,
like Guinness says, no, they're they're just they're dilettants. What
(33:55):
we need is a governing body that's dedicated only to
chili peppers, well not Guinness, right, yeah. And one reason
why is because it changes, like people are cultivating these things.
There could be a new hot, hottest pepper every three months,
and Guinness isn't gonna stay on top of that, right,
So there it's kind of like, why are you being
(34:16):
talking to those guys. So some people do differ to
Guinness because it is the closest thing that they have
to um a judgment saying this is the world's hottest
people just like we're saying that. But um, there's no
organizing central body that that is dedicated to judging which
is the hottest chili pepper, and there should be there.
(34:37):
According to these people, they could use it, of course
they think the government should supply it, but they can't
even decide on whether that the hottest pepper in the
world should be it's peak or what averages it's mean,
So right now, um Guinness goes by the mean, and
as it stands in the world, the hottest chili pepper
(34:58):
as of August two th is called the Carolina Reaper. Yeah,
the HP twenty two b in h seven out of
rock Kill, South Carolina, and the Carolina Reaper has an
average an average. Remember that UM red Savenia Habaniro had
five hundred and seventy thousand Scoville heat units. Yes, this
(35:19):
one averages one million, five hundred and sixty nine thousand,
three hundred Scoville heat units. That's right, and a peak
of over two point two million. YEA and hats off
to Ed Curry of pucker Butt Pepper Company and uh
Fort Mill. He's He's a very controversial pepper grower. He is.
He blended. The original cross breed was between a ghost pepper,
(35:40):
which was the previous hottest pepper introduced to the North
America in two thousand, uh the infamous ghost pepper, and
then he uh crossbreeded that with bread that with a
red Habaniro. So the the boot Jilokia is the ghost pepper.
It's from India and from two thousand seven it was
(36:01):
the reigning champ and from before that was that Red
Savinia from two thousand and seven. Again, that's as far
as Guinness is concerned. Um, but there are peppers out there.
There's the um so, what's the scorpion one? The Trinidad
scorpion Butch t Yeah, so that was actually grown by
some guys in Australia who crossed a Trinidad scorpion which
(36:26):
is already very hot with a pepper that was grown
by a guy named Butch Taylor in I think Mississippi.
He's right outside of that big on this, as it
turns out, yeah, big time. Um. I think the thing
is like, if there's people who listen to like Front
too four two and go boar hunting, if there's a
larger population of them and that country, that that country
(36:47):
is going to be more likely to be into eating
hot peppers. What's Front two four two? They're like an
industrial band? What does that mean about me? Because I've
never even heard of it. You don't need hot hot pepper? Okay? Uh.
There are some who claim, in fact grow in southern California.
Says I've had I had a pepper once that was
(37:10):
over three million. But I don't even publish that stuff,
he says, because it's a fluke. Right, So so that's
the that's the question, like, should that one be considered
the world's hottest pepper or should that plant have to
that species consistently have to put out something at three million? Yeah,
it doesn't matter. Well, that's another question entirely. You know,
(37:31):
can't we just I know they get specific about it
and they want to do, but it seems like we
can just say all of these are very hot, very
very hot. You're welcome. Yeah, I don't know. It's scary stuff.
If you ask me, it is, Um Christopher Guests should
do a mockumentary about pepper hotheads. It's right for it,
all right. So let's say you want to pick out
(37:54):
a pepper at a grocery store, look for firm skin
for super bright colors, which I don't know. I'm pretty
down on produce and big box grocery stores. But if
you go to a farmer's market, and especially like a
local farmer's market, you're gonna see weird shaped, super super
(38:17):
bright colored peppers. Yeah, weird shaped is right. Remember, Yeah,
we've talked about this before. Grocery stores won't sell ones
that are perfectly awesome and maybe even better tasting because
they look weird. Right, that bell pepper looks like Richard
Nixon throw it in the trash. Yeah, and it's like,
I'm not a crook. Um. The longer they ripe and
(38:37):
the hotter they get, so like you said, the red ones, Um,
if the red ones still have a little green, they're
not fully ripe yet, so they probably won't be as hot.
But that's that's the case with a bell probably anyway.
So you're not looking for heat, right, looking for sweet Um.
If you are cooking with peppers. Uh, it says in
here like be sure to wash your hands. But what
(38:59):
you really need to do, if you're serious, is wear
gloves where, um, where doctors what are they called rubber gloves? Yeah,
rubber gloves, um, because that is truly the only way. Like,
if you come into contact with your fingers and that
membrane or those seeds, you can wash your hands ten
times and you forget and like the next day you
(39:23):
will get an eyebooger out and you'll be like, what
in the world my eyes on fire? You take your
contact and you go to put them in the next
I can't imagine. I cooked one night some piea and
you some hot peppers and did not wear gloves, and
I went peepee later. No, I didn't think about it,
(39:43):
and I had a speaking of syphilis burning sensation down below.
It was bad. That's how they simulated for medical students.
Really it was bad. So I learned the hard way.
I just got a box of those night is it
nitrate gloves? Nitrate or nitrite? And I explodes the other
(40:05):
one's fine, I think, well, I put them in the kitchen.
I also wear a painter's respirator. What kind of peppers
are you working with? The you know, the hot stuff
like ghost peppers. No, but I cook with hobby arrows
and stuff sometimes, and it's like it's nuclear. The fumes are.
It's like if you're over the sink clean and the mountain,
you're breathing it in, you'll you'll find yourself, or at
(40:25):
least I do, coughing and burning. So I'll wear the
respirator in my club. So um you mean? And I
would juice sometimes, and every once in a while she'd
put like a pepper in there, like a hall of
peen you and it would just turn the kitchen into
like like a tear gas bomb had gone off. It's crazy.
It kids everywhere. It does because these things are basically
(40:48):
vaporized and they just spread so easily through the air
and it definitely gives it a kick. Um. Oh, if
you want to store peppers, um, like we said, you
can dry them out and they'll keep for a long time. Uh,
don't keep you don't want to wash them. You want
to just put them unwashed into your fridge. Yeah, true,
(41:10):
and they'll just keep just regular peppers. Peppers will keep
for a long time. It's not something that goes bad
very quickly. But you can freeze them if you slice
them and put them on a baking tray in the freezer.
Then you can collect them and just throw them in
a bag and you can keep them for like a year. Uh.
But I don't see why you freeze peppers. Just buy
the mountain neat and cook with them or pickle them.
(41:32):
That's great. Pickled peppers are wonderful. I can just eat
those straight. I don't like pickled things, so I'm not
into it. But yeah, it's it's so good for you.
Pickling pickled foods are so good for you, there's so
many health benefits. I'll you'll eat other healthy things that
I enjoy. But how do you not like pickles? Stuff? Like,
I could eat pickled any you could cut your finger
(41:54):
off and pickle it. I'd probably eat it. How does
anyone not like anything? But I mean, like, what about it?
You don't like the tartness, No, just the the taste
anything pickled, like a pickled pickle, sour kraut. Oh you
don't like sour krau, hate sauer kraud. I guess I
could have seen that. I hate. I hate pickled so
(42:14):
much that I have to ask and rest, like when
I go to a pub and have like a burger
and fries, to leave the pickle off, because invariably they
will put the pickle down soaking into the French fries
in the bun, and it will ruin that for me. Wow,
you hate pickles. That might hate pickles that much? Well,
all the pickles that you get on the side from
now Okay, well Emily eats the pickles, you can arm
(42:35):
wrestle her for them. Okay, that's fine, that's a deal. Um.
But when I said you shouldn't you know just buy
the amount. If you're growing pickles or I'm sorry, growing peppers.
Got me on pickles, pickled peppers, then you might end
up with a lot of peppers. And that's why you
might want to fickle them or pickle them if you're
into that. Because we grew peppers one year and they
were easy to grow and bountiful. Yeah, pepper plant goes. Yeah,
(42:58):
that equals a lot of peppers. I guess we should
talk about growing them a little bit. Huh. I guess.
So they're perennials, so that means they stick around. Well,
it depends on where you live. Yeah, if it's cold,
you might grow them as annuals. Right, they're pretty flexible. Um,
you can start them as seeds ten weeks prior to
the first frost. You want to germinate them in little trays.
(43:21):
First you soaked the seeds for a couple of days.
Then you germinate them with a little bit of starter
ten weeks prior to frost. After the last frost comes
and goes, you can start to harden them by moving
them outside a couple hours at a time and talk
to them, say this is good for you. Right, then
you shake them takes a couple of weeks, um a
(43:43):
few hours each day more until they are hard and ready, right,
and then they start to grow. You want to fertilize them.
When the peppers grow out and turn hard, you can
cut them. And when you do, you want to cut
some stem because it extends their shelf life, and then
you have peppers. You can also just go to the
(44:04):
store and buy some peppers. Yeah, if you're in the
garden garden, yeah, if not, or I've just grown from seed. Man,
it seems like such a nightmare to me. Well, it's
for people who have time and what our hobbyists. But
I also get like if it's a very like if
it's an heirloom something or just something you're not going
to find anywhere. With peppers, I mean, sure there are
(44:26):
some like if you want to buy the Carolina Reaper,
you can get packs of those seeds for like ten
bucks or something. Right, You're not gonna find those at
any store. So I get growing those from seed, But
like growing like a squash plant from seed, it's like,
what are you doing, man, You've got you should have
better things to do with your time than that a
weaker squash last year from seed? What are you doing, man,
(44:48):
we have a garden, right, but you can just buy
like the seedlings. Yeah, you could do that. Okay. Are
you saying why do people garden? No? I love gardening. Okay,
I'm just saying growing from seed a plant. Like, if
you like growing from seed, you should get a seed
catalog and find something that you can't find elsewhere. That's
(45:09):
what I'm saying. I have a very strong opinion on
growing things from to each their own with everything but gardening,
but gardening, we we use start our plants a lot too.
Not everything is from seed. Because you're saying, sensible people,
but do you do you see my point? I guess
Do you get seed catalogs not catalogs? I don't think,
(45:31):
but we buy buy seeds online. You should get your
hands on sea catalog Yeah. Yeah, I can't remember the
name of the company. That sounds like good toilet book reading.
Yes it is. It's just so. Yes, it's very delightful.
It makes you so excited for spring. H Off label
uses of peppers will say you can eat them or
(45:53):
you can rub them on your pain parts. Yeah, because
remember they overload your nose susceptor. That's right, can lower
your blood pressure. They can be antiquagulants. Like, I think
that's one and the same. Think about it. If it
thins the blood, it's going to also like lower your
blood pressure. True, I would think. Okay, it's also been
(46:15):
shown chuck, it lowers bad cholesterol, not even not just
any cholesterol. It lowers your bad cholesterol. And not only
does it lower the cholesterol present in your blood, I
think it attracts it, right because remember it's fat soluble
um and then it gets fleshed out of the system.
It actually removes the build up of bad cholesterol plaque
(46:36):
in your arteries. Man, this stuff is it makes me
want to eat more peppers. Already eat quite a bit
of peppers. I need to eat more, I think. Uh.
In the future, they hope to use it for um
cancer prevention, U stroke heart attack prevention, right, you know,
I guess it already works. Is that if it's lowering
your blood blood pressure, that's what I got from that too.
(46:59):
But the cancer or it's its own thing. They found
that that cap sasan itself basically attacks tumors. Wow, I
mean that's Are you upset about the growing from seed tirade? Oh? No,
I don't care. What like it was directed at me. Yeah,
it didn't mean for it to be, but it took
(47:20):
a pretty hard turn at the end. There no right
to your right to your front door. I don't care
right to your garden door? No, no, no no. Uh.
We have an article called ken Ghost peppers kill you
on our website. It cannot it's not good. Um, but
apparently three pounds um the peppers can kill you. Is
(47:41):
that right? Yeah? How like what's the mode of death?
I don't know. They don't say. That's why it's not
a good article. Well, so these these pain receptors, the
um t r P, I mean it's a toxin cap
sasan is trpv one um. They're also responsible for regulating
your body heat. Helping regulate your body heat. So I
(48:03):
wonder if you have like a heat stroke or something
like that. I don't know. I would just say it's
a If it's a toxin and you eat too much
of any toxin, you could die. Yeah. But but there's
you know, you die from like some toxin slow your
respiration and you stop breathing from lack of eye you
know what. I bet you had something to do with respiration,
because if you are in a hot pepper eating contest,
(48:23):
one thing that will talk about is their throat swelling
and having a hard time breathing. That'd be my guess.
I think they uh. I think there was a Science
Daily article originally that said that. So there was a
speaking of ghost peppers up until last year. In two
thousand and fourteen, there was a restaurant in Grantham, Lincolnshire,
(48:45):
I take two to be in England, probably called Bindy
it was. The restaurant was named Bindy. It was an
Indian restaurant, UM, and it had a curry called the
Widower that used twenty ghost peppers among a ton of
other ones. And currently um they had sold like five
six hundred of them and like about three quarters of
(49:06):
the people finished it managed to finish it, which yeah,
if you think like the ghost pepper that was like
the one that got all the press in two thousand seven.
I think what's remarkable is that people that are ordering
this are probably have a very high tolerance anyway, and
if they're not able to finish it, that says a
lot exactly. So that's chili peppers. Everybody go forth and
(49:27):
eat some. You said that it doesn't give you ulcers,
and in fact, it actually helps with cases of ulcers. Right,
that's right, and that amazing. It is. Okay, So if
you want to know more about chili peppers, you can
type that word into the search bar how stuff works
dot com and it will bring up this article. And
I said, uh, search pops as temple listener. Man, I'm
(49:52):
gonna call this a rarely granted shout out. We get
request a lot for shout outs and we couldn't do
them all at the was our show would be called
shout outs, you should know. But this one was from
a fourteen year old girl who sounded very sweet. So
I'm reading it. Hi, guys, I'm a fourteen year old
girl who's been listening for a long time, and I
(50:12):
wanted to say thanks for the time that you spend
to make it smarter. It's been really fun for my
sister Anna and I uh to listen to your podcast
before we go to sleep. However, she's leaving for college
soon to study studio art, and I'll be all alone
when I listen to you, guys. So if it isn't
too much to ask, could you give her a shout
out and tell her that she is an awesome sister
(50:33):
and will be missed. Uh, Sarah, you could tell her
that yourself too. By the way you should express your emotions.
I don't like to talk. You can also say to
my brother's Jonathan, Stephen and Tommy that they are okay.
Too many kids are in this family. It sounds like
one five. Uh if you oh, she said, no, don't
(50:54):
mention that's sixth one. I'm just kidding. Uh. If you
do this, then you guys will be the best podcasters ever,
not like you aren't already. Actually, Anna just sent an
email or maybe it's Anna to you guys last night
about hula hoops and uh, if you could put both
our emails on the air, that would be the best.
I'm not gonna do that, but I did write her back,
(51:17):
so um, this is a secret from annas it would
be a big surprise. So uh, Sarah to Anna, Anna,
good luck at college. You will be missed. You're a
great sister. That's so nice. Chuck and the brothers Jonathan,
Stephen and Tommy, you guys are okay, man, that was nice,
very kind of you. You never know. Uh, Well, if
(51:38):
you want to see if you can tuget Chuck's heart
strings give you your best shot good luck. You can
tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you
Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff
podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has always
joined us at at home on the web. Stuff you
Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
(52:01):
production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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