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 Melissia wrote:
Habaneros are nasty, nasty things. If you want a good pepper, there's plenty of them out there, but you don't want something that's so hot you can't taste the actual meal.

There's a difference between spicy and stupid. I like putting hot sauce on my food-- especially in my pasta-- but at sone point it just become stupid.

Thats pretty much my opinion on spicy food

A mate of mine grows the white habanero, the red savina and the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T chillies (but he's a chilli fiend). He grows them in hothouses (partly to prevent frost killing them and partly to encourage the fire - ambient growing temperature DOES have an effect on how hot they get. The hotter the ambient temp, the hotter they get.)

I stop at around the Jalapeno/Poblano/chipotle level.

I use habanero olive oil in most of my cooking. I find habaneros to have no real flavor, just heat.

Anyone growing their own? My crop has been poor this year, thanks to an extremely mild Scottish summer (residents of Aviemore were scaping frost off their cars on friday morning!) . The Naga, Scotch Bonnet and Serrano plants haven't matured, and only the Apache seedling I got for £1 has borne any fruit at all. What started as a promising indoor chili farm is now a fruit fly infested disappointment.

Whilst visiting in Texas, I had the oppertunity to sample some habanero burgers at a resturant ( don't recall the name)near Houston.
The place had a "heat idex" which rated just how hot their burgers were,on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being dubbed "Nuclear" or "Inferrno" or " Holy hell there is no god"...something along those lines.
Anyway, proud son of Louisiana that I am, there was no way I intended to allow these mere Texans to best me in a battle of " What insanely spicy food can you kill yourself with" contest, and so I boldly order a number 5 burger...
...My reaction, after a siingle bite was not unlike that of KC's in his OP, I honestly thought that EMT's would be hauling me out of the burger joint and wisking me away to the nearest hospital...and I'm a huge fan of spicy foods mind you.
Later, after several beers had managed to get the blaze under control, I decided to try again...going a bit lower on the heat idex scale and opting for a number 2 ( which I belive had been dubbed " Ha Ha the Five almost killed you didn't it ya Wimp.") and found it to be quite tasty indeed.
The trick with spicy foods is to find your "comfort zone" were the heat and spicy complement the flavors of the food rather than leave you writhing in agony.

Was the pepper part of the burger mix prior to it being cooked, or did they just dump a bunch of chilis and hot sauce over a standard slab of patty?

 RossDas wrote:
Was the pepper part of the burger mix prior to it being cooked, or did they just dump a bunch of chilis and hot sauce over a standard slab of patty?

The burgers had peppers mixed into the meat, and various mixed sauces wich went over them ( almost like a mayonaise) as well as a mixture ( and these were on the hotter ones) of peppers and onions ( at least I believe thay were onions) topping them.

 FITZZ wrote:

 RossDas wrote:
Was the pepper part of the burger mix prior to it being cooked, or did they just dump a bunch of chilis and hot sauce over a standard slab of patty?

The burgers had peppers mixed into the meat, and various mixed sauces wich went over them ( almost like a mayonaise) as well as a mixture ( and these were on the hotter ones) of peppers and onions ( at least I believe thay were onions) topping them.

Ah, that sort of stuff goes straight for the kill! I like the super hot chilis in dishes like curry, but put them in noodles etc and it tends to be more on the unpleasant side!

 RossDas wrote:

 FITZZ wrote:

 RossDas wrote:
Was the pepper part of the burger mix prior to it being cooked, or did they just dump a bunch of chilis and hot sauce over a standard slab of patty?

The burgers had peppers mixed into the meat, and various mixed sauces wich went over them ( almost like a mayonaise) as well as a mixture ( and these were on the hotter ones) of peppers and onions ( at least I believe thay were onions) topping them.

Ah, that sort of stuff goes straight for the kill! I like the super hot chilis in dishes like curry, but put them in noodles etc and it tends to be more on the unpleasant side!

Exactly, I found that the burgers which were set higher up on the " heat scale" were very " unpleasent", seeming to be entirely devoid of any attempt at "flavor" and merely existing to destroy anyone foolish enough ( me for example) to actually attempt to consume one.

Ha! nice work KC but you know that a whole Habanero doesn't even come close to being as hot as that pic of me in the bath!


plus, you're a silly silly bearded man for doing that! I'd have a shot at it but I can't unfortunately as it could kill me due to having an asthma attack but I have drunk a jar of left over pickle juice!

Pickle juice is just a chaser. It takes a real man to eat a habanero sardine shake.

I remember Somewhere someone makes something called "Black Blood" Wicth is pure Capsaicin. Someone tried a lick of it and nearly burned his tonge off.

 nerdfest09 wrote:
Ha! nice work KC but you know that a whole Habanero doesn't even come close to being as hot as that pic of me in the bath!


plus, you're a silly silly bearded man for doing that! I'd have a shot at it but I can't unfortunately as it could kill me due to having an asthma attack but I have drunk a jar of left over pickle juice!

Oh my god, that put me in tears from laughing. I imagined you in a bubble bath singing the random rubber ducky song.
But yea, Id put money on it anyone with asthma or a similar condition would suffer tremendously from that. I ended up, just after making this thread, forcing myself to puke it up. All I could taste was the taste of the pepper itself, and llike I mentioned, it wasnt a very tasty pepper at all. Bleh!

Its funny though, at first it DID taste spicy, I swear by that, but after a short period of time, the spice went away, and it simply felt like I turned a burner on my stove top on, and just left my tongue on the metal grate. Now I enjoy my spicy food as much as anyone that does, but that wasnt even close to pleasant, it was just pure pain.

Yeah, Hot sauce can be dangerous the the uninitiated.
One time at my school two girls brought a thing of specialty hot sauce and dared two boys to drink it for a "Special" prize, one kid got it in his eyes, another suffered an attack of some kind(pulmonary i think) and the ambulance had to be called.

Years ago, when I was an intern at a DC-area think tank, we used to host catered luncheons for folks who were in for various conferences. The caterer we used, for some odd reason, used habaneros as garnishes on the sandwich platters.

When I noticed that, I mentioned it to one of the other interns (a guy from Wisconsin) and said it was a good thing that none of the attendees had tried one out. So, being from Wisconsin, and not really knowing hot peppers, he asked why...

So I offered a deal. I'd eat half of one of them if he'd eat the other. He agreed, and i cut one pepper in half. 'Course, being from Wisconsin and not really knowing hot peppers, he didn't notice that I'd cut it so his half had all the seeds and membranes while mine was just the skin.

We both popped our "halves"... He didn't think it was too bad at first, but 15 minutes later, he grabs me by the shirt and yells, "IT WON'T STOP BURNING!!!!"

Ah... Good times!

I grew up getting into jalapeno eating contests with my father, but I'm definitely slowing down as I get older. Habaneros are more or less out of my comfort zone these days... I tried some gourmet salt the other day that was seasoned with Ghost Pepper, and dang that was some hot stuff!

Valete,

JohnS