November 29, 2025 • 40 mins
Tanner and Jerry turn up the heat with an episode dedicated to peppers in all their forms. They start with where chilis came from, how they traveled across the globe, and the ways they shaped entire cuisines. From there, they break down how to cook with peppers for flavor—not just fire—so even heat-averse cooks can get more out of them in the kitchen. Then things get intense as they welcome a Guinness World Record holding pepper eater while Jerry bravely takes on a Scotch Bonnet he immediately regrets. Finally, they taste-test a lineup of hot sauces and Tanner shares the wild, very real story of the original Sriracha—and how the lack of a trademark created a world of legal copycats.
Amuse Booze: Spicy Margarita with habanero tincture.
This week’s sponsors: Sous Vide Yoga and Pickled Milk.
Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.
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Amuse Booze: Spicy Margarita with habanero tincture.
This week’s sponsors: Sous Vide Yoga and Pickled Milk.
Thank you for listening! Join us again every weekend for more food inspired fun. Have questions you want answered, comments to make the show better, do you want to join our growing list of radio stations partners, or just keep in touch? Let us know at Flavorphiles.com.
Follow on Instagram:
Flavorphiles: https://www.instagram.com/flavorphilespod/
Tanner: https://www.instagram.com/tagaragar/
Follow on Tik Tok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@flavorphiles
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, I'm afraid of this one. I think this episode
of Flavor Files might kill me. I'm Jerryega, broadcaster and
I'm with my son Tannerregar, who was a restaurant tour
a chef, a bartender, and we're going to talk chilis
and spice, and later on we're going to have a
world champion hot spice eater on and I'm going to
subject myself to a bunch of hot sauce and chili's here.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to see how you do
because growing up you were always the hot sauce guy.
You like the chilies, you like the hot sauce. We
were children, we did not care for them, but you
were the person. I remember one time we were at
Grandma's house and you got down to this bottle of
Tabasco sauce. That thing looked thirty years old, and you
just I don't your mother was shook when she saw
(00:44):
how much hot sauce you applied to that food. I
don't think she had as much spice in her life
as we're going to consume later at the end of
the show.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Well, you know, the hot sauce is the one thing
It's just that when we have Mike Jack, the world
champion spice eater, on the show, Oh, I'm going to
try some Scotch bonnet and I'm not talking about Scotch
bond at hot Sauce here. I'm talking about biting into
the actual pepper. And I'm quite worried about that, to
be honest.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I unfortunately wasn't able to find any at the market,
so I won't be able to participate. But we've got
that coming up to start off with. Here with our
ammuz booze, our sort of drink of the day if
you will. If you're in Texas, every restaurant menu has
a spicy margarita on it, and the spicy margarita is
one of the top selling cocktails at every single restaurant.
(01:31):
So I made one in our chili, spice and everything
nice episode, and it's a classic margarita. We're just adding spice.
There are three ways to add spice to a margarita.
The first is, of course, buy some peppers, muddle them
in your shaker and throw them in there. Jalapenos are
a super classic option to do this. One issue I
have with jalapenos is they're super variable in terms of
(01:53):
how hot they are, so you don't necessarily get to
control how much spice you add. The second is to
grab your favorite hot sauce. Like we said, we're gonna
be doing some hot sauce taste testing later. So if
you have a hot sauce you like, you do know
how to control how much you add, and you can
add those specific flavors. But hot sauces might be fermented,
or they might have vinegars, or they're a blend of
(02:14):
different things. So my favorite way to add spice to
a margarita is to actually make a tincture. Tincture is
just a very fancy word for something. I steeped and
ever clear. That way, I got like a very pure flavor.
So think of it like vanilla extract, right, put vanilla
beans into ever Clear and I get pure vanilla extraction.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
I like to do this.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I take holapanos, or I take hob and arrows. I
cut them in half so that the alcohol has access
to the middle. Put them in the jar, pour ever
Clear on top. Wait a week, and all of a sudden,
when I do it hobb and arrows, I get this bright,
beautiful orange tincture. It's an even heat. After I drain it,
kind of throw the peppers away. If you leave it
long enough, they'll actually lose all orange color and they
(02:57):
come out this sort of like very gray color. All
the alcohol extracts it. Throw those away. You have a tincture.
It lasts forever, and you can add it to anything
you want, almost like your home hot sauce. And it
has a great flavor. And that's how we make cocktails
at our restaurant.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Okay, and then because you have your own, after you've
made your first drink, you're gonna know how much you
want to put in a drink.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Absolutely. Something we used to do at the restaurant was
we would offer spicy margarita level one to five.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Well, yeah, so I've tried.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
That, yeah, and you might remember level five was dangerous.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
But you can sort of control it and it gives
you the power to control the heat and you don't
have to worry about having fresh peppers in your kitchen,
so you can just have that heat whenever you need it.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Well, you enjoy your margarita.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
While we think about this, why are chilies spicy? What
is it that makes them different than another plant?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
So the chili has an interesting evolutionary tactic. So the
thing that makes it spicy is called cap sasin. When
it burns your tongue, that's the chemical cap sason triggering
your pain receptor, the reason the chili evolved this way.
I don't know how the chili figured this out, so
that's beyond me. I'm not a biologist, but the chili
(04:07):
pepper figures out somehow. I guess that mammals can feel
pain when they eat very spicy things, but birds can't.
So if I wanted, if I'm a plant and I'm
somehow sentient in talking to my plant friends, I want
our seed to go as far as possible, spread the
peppers everywhere. Well, birds travel over a farther distance than mammals,
(04:30):
so if we can get birds to eat us instead
of mammals, will travel more so. The spicier the pepper gets,
the less likely a mammal is to eat it. And
then a bird, which can't receive capsaicin, they're literally incapable
of tasting capsaicin. The birds will say, wow, oh my god,
look at that beautiful fruit that's down there that nothing
else is eating. I better go eat that. They eat
(04:51):
it and they can spread the seed farther. This is why,
by the way that some people, some like very boutique
chicken farmers, will feed either red bell pepper or other
types of peppers, and chilis two birds like two chickens,
because they can't taste it. And if you feed them
lots of red chilies, the yolks start to turn red
and they have like a spice quality to them that
(05:13):
you can perceive, but the chicken can't.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Wow. And then these weren't originally all around the world.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
No, so we think, now, go chi chang out of Korea,
or we think about bird's eye chilies out of Thailand,
but Chili's actually involved in the United States, or not
the United States, but the Americas. So it's they're actually
from the Americas. And people definitely talk about all the
bad things that sort of the Colombian Exchange created, but
(05:40):
one of the great things that they created was the
spread of chilies. Portuguese and Spanish traders moving products around
the world started spreading chilies to other places, and these
chilies resulted in things getting to China, right that becomes
Seschuan peppercorns grow out of that, they get to Korea,
like we talked about with the go chi cho peprika
(06:01):
comes up in Hungry, Mediterranean, Northern African spices. All of
these chilies originated from the Americas and started spreading in
the seventeen and eighteen hundreds to all of these other places,
which has been really cool because then you look hundreds
of years later and we think, but Hungarian paprika is
so different than a Mexican habinniero, which is so different
(06:22):
than a Seshuan peppercorn, and these sort of fundamental components
of regional cuisine evolved over several hundred years, all coming
from those original peppers.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Okay, let's talk about then, why to cook with chilis.
I mean, I'm still sitting here with trepidation about eating
this pepper. I'm going to eat when we have the
world champion hot pepper eater.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Mike Jack on the show coming up. But before we get.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
There, I like hot sauces and peppers. But despite what
you said about what I did at my mom's house
your grandma, essentially I like to mix them in to
create flavor, hot heat with the food, not punishing myself. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Absolutely, you know it's funny because sometimes the punishing is
what makes it so fun, I see, right, or it
makes it fun to serve it to other people. Well right,
but sort of that like spice component is really a
component of the flavors peppers. By the way, I forgot
to mention this before. Part of the reason Columbus came
to the Americas was because he wanted to find spices.
(07:23):
He was looking for black pepper specifically, So he shows up,
he finds something that spicy and says, well, it's not
black pepper, but it is pepper. So the reason chillis
which were originally grown like the Aztecs, the Incans, they
used to grow these, right, But he calls them pepper
the same way that he called the people he found Indians,
because he didn't have a way to reconcile what he
(07:46):
knew with this new discovery. And it's funny that the
word pepper, hundreds of years later is still in use.
But peppers are a wonderful thing. Obviously they're used to
create a great spice component, but they can also be
really used well in flavors. And that's why I like
to kind of find things. There are these sort of
iconic dishes right Mole in Mexico where it's chili's and
(08:09):
it's tomatoes, and it's chocolate actually, or kimchi. Kimchi is
cabbage that's been fermented, so sort of think sauer kraut,
but then it's had lots of time. Shrimp actually helps
it get the fermentation going, and then chili's kind of
get it going. Or paprika, which leads to paprikash, which
is a very Hungarian dish that you are probably familiar with.
(08:31):
Paprika is also really popular in Spanish cuisine, so there's
a lot of cuisines that evolved to incorporate the chili
as a flavor component, not just spicy. And that's something
I definitely want to talk about in that second segment
we're doing today about maybe I don't love spicy food,
but how can I make it taste great and incorporate
this as a flavor instead.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Okay, yeah, That's always something that I find a little
interesting is I have a dish and I think, okay,
i'll take this hot sauce and I'll put a couple
drops in there. Oh, I haven't noticed it yet, put
a little more in there, and after a while you
start to notice it. It's like using salt just you
keep adding until you get the flavor that you want.
And I'm never actually looking for something that's going to
(09:13):
make me or anybody I serve the food too go.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
You know, it's funny being here in Texas, sometimes you
do want it to be hot that way. It's interesting
how eating food that's hot can make you sweat, and
then that cools you down in sort of this weird paradox.
You start to sweat, you start to feel it, but
because now your body's sweating and regulating heat, it can
make us feel cooler even though it made our mouth hotter.
(09:40):
It doesn't really make sense to me, but it is
a true thing I have experienced.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Okay, So that would be why the spices became popular
in places in South America, Mexico, the deeper southern states
like Texas, and not necessarily here in Ontario.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Where I am.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I wouldn't say Ontario and the Great Plains of Canada
is where I've experienced very spicy cuisine. I wouldn't say
growing up in Gilbert Plains, Manitoba, as you did, was
probably a hot spot, if you will. But the idea
of hot weather breeding hot chili's breeding hot cuisine. They
(10:15):
definitely marry together, and I think that's why you see
a lot of the most spicy pepper's most spicy cuisine
coming from those regions. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
All right, well, this is Flavor Files.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
I'm Jerry Yegar, He's Tanor Agar, and we're doing a
special here on spices and if you love hate. This
episode of Flavor Files is brought to you by suvid Yoga.
Each session guides you through gentle stretches and into alignment
while you relax in a perfectly temperature controlled water bath
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(10:48):
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As you covered souvid Yoga inner piece at exactly one
hundred and thirty five degrees for two hours, We're going
to talk to a guy who can eat more hot
(11:10):
spices than anybody in the world. Certified by they'll Guinness
Book of World Records. He has twenty records. Mike Jack
eats heat and we'll talk about turning chilies into hot
sauce as well.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
We're here talking about chilies today, and obviously the thing
they're most famous for is being spicy, but what a
lot of people don't appreciate is that they're also really flavorful.
And a lot of people think that they're afraid of spice,
that they don't want spicy food, so they sort of
write off peppers altogether. And I think that's a real disappointment.
(11:45):
I think you're robbing yourself of so many wonderful flavors
when you do that, whether it's home, in your kitchen
or if it's at a restaurant. So one of the
things I really wanted to go over with you today
are some of the dishes that I love and some
of the ways to use peppers for flavor or even
if you don't love spice.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
I'm Jerry, I got broadcaster. He's Tannaregar chef, bartender and
restaurant tour. Let's start with chili's are not as much
about fire as they are about flavor.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Absolutely, these peppers. When you think a pepper, a red
bell pepper, a green bell pepper, and all the bell peppers,
which by the way, are all the exact same plant.
They're just different stages of ripeness. So they start green
and then they gradually turn red. So if you're at
the store and you're buying these, and you think you're
buying all these different vegetables, you're buying one vegetable. It's
(12:37):
sort of like buying a green banana versus a yellow
banana versus a brown banana. That's all that's happening. But
a bell pepper is a pepper. It has a really
wonderful flavor. Many people who think maybe, oh I don't
like spicy food do think, oh, well, roasted red bell
peppers are so delicious perfect. Then you're exactly engaging in
what I'm talking about. There's a dish we have it
(12:58):
on the menu at one of our restaurants from Syria
or Turkey called Muhammara, and it's roasted red bell peppers.
You put it in the food processor, you add some walnuts,
and then that's it. A little bit of Greek olive oil,
a little salt, and you get a dish that has
a wonderful pepper flavor, a wonderful sort of roasted pepper flavor,
(13:20):
but it isn't spicy. And that's one of the sort
of the classic dishes I love to talk to people
about when they're having peppers. Another would be taking little
baby red peppers a bichio peppers really popular sometimes they're
also called book club peppers and stuffing them with goat cheese.
This is a really classic Spanish tapa. And again it's
(13:40):
more about the flavor of the chili. It's about the
richness of the goat cheese than it is about being spicy. Spicy, spicy,
and those are things that I would say everybody can
enjoy even if you don't like hot.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
All right, Well, there's there are levels of it, right,
Like they start with something like when you mentioned a
roasted bell pepper. I mean, you can roll that up
and just take it out of there, cool it done,
and just eat it. You don't even need to cool
it down. You can just eat it and you don't
have to be a person who's ready for hot spices.
That's about as mild as cats, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, Picchio peppers, peppido peppers, they're they're all like this
sort of The next step up might be some of
the ones that are a little bit more smoky than
they are hot. A chipotle pepper is just a jlapano
that's been smoked and preserved. Okay, So if you're a
(14:32):
person who has had a holopano and you say, well,
that's not too spicy for me, then a Chipotle shouldn't
be too spicy for you. Either you can buy them
they come in little cans lots of times, or you
see them made into sauces. Obviously, there's a sort of
famous chain called Chipotle. I think a couple people have
maybe heard of it. Yep, and that namesake pepper It's
(14:53):
more smoky. Peprika is another one. We spoke just a
second ago about Hungarian peprika. How it's really smoky. And
I love peprika as a seasoning. I love to put
it on pizzas, I love to fold it into sauces,
and it has this wonderful smoky flavor it in the chipotle,
which are perfect for adding to something, whether it's a margarita,
(15:14):
whether it's just folding it into tacos or kind of
just adding it to whatever you generally tend to make.
I also like to take paprika or chipotles and add
them to chicken one of those like classic meals where
I sort of just throw chicken in my crockpot, maybe
with a stick of butter and a little bit of chipotle,
and then I just let it cook. It sort of
breaks down, comes pull apart chicken, and I can kind
(15:37):
of use that on anything, salads, tacos, whatever. It's a
great meal, pep food, and you get the flavors more
than you are able to get the spice. Some of
the dried peppers do this too. Ancho chilis have more
of a sort of a chocolate note. Guahio peppers are
a little bit more raisiny in flavor. I also love
(16:00):
dry peppers because they're not going to go bad on
me the way some fresh preppers can. I have this
bad habit I think a lot of people do. I
go to the grocery store and I'm so excited by
all the little goodies I find laying all over the
grocery store, and I bring them home, and all of
a sudden, I get into my work week. I come
back five days later and I open the fridge door
(16:23):
and all the produce I was so excited about has
gently gone bad over the course of the week. And
I love dried peppers for that reason is they're not
going to do that to me, They won't let me
down and I can just reach into the pantry and
grab them.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Do you drive them yourself?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I don't drive them myself. Could you drive them yourself? Absolutely,
But when someone is going to do it at a
professional level better than I would have, not charged me
very much for it. That's sort of my ideal scenario.
Maybe some people don't have the bounty of Mexican markets
that I do here in Texas, but dried peppers are
(16:59):
really easy to come by, and I would absolutely not
bother with making them myself. Just buy them, and then
they're so easy to use.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Okay, what kinds of things would you do in a
dish to balance the fact when you're using a pepper
in a dish unless you've done, as we said, the
bell peppers and you just want to eat them because
you can. But if you're using the hotter peppers for
the flavor, what do you balance it with?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Sugar is always a good component, having a little sugar,
having a little acid, and also I find herbal flavors
are really good to sort of balance out how spicy
a pepper might be. I have certainly been guilty of
lots of people. You sort of cook by sight, and
I would say one of the challenges of becoming professional
(17:41):
is hubris where I'm making something and I say I
know what I'm doing, and then all of a sudden
I try it and to go, oh God, this is
way too spicy. And so a little bit of sugar
can help you, maybe just a little bit of water,
more of whatever else was in that pan, to try
to thin it out a little bit. But another thing
that's great for it. Dairy is fantastic for cutting spice.
(18:05):
So one thing I like to do is combine butter
or cream plus chili's because the way that the dairy
will combine with the chili helps me get a little
bit more flavor out of the pepper without getting all
of the spice. So I find there's this sauce that
Grace and I make all the time at home. We
(18:26):
call it creamy grain sauce because it doesn't have a
different name. It's basically holapano's cilantro Greek yogurt, a little
lime juice, and you just put it all on the
food processor and we put in tons of holapanos. But
it doesn't get too spicy because the Greek yogurt helps
cut that and if you find that you're making something
(18:48):
that's way too spicy. I have yet to discover a
dish that didn't benefit from a little cream or a
little butter. I'm very Julia Child that way, and so
that be sort of my go to is. Oh no,
I have to add butter. What a shame.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Okay, I'm gonna put you on the hotspot here because
way back when you first started your first restaurant and
you were experimenting, you did a dish which I think
you're still proud of, but it didn't work out with
the customers. It hot Piper roulette, I think you called it.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah. Have you ever heard a musician talk about how
this should have been a hit but the public doesn't
appreciate it. Yeah, so Russian roulette peppers should have been
a hit, but the public didn't appreciate it. This is
our worst review dish of all time. I'll happily talk
about this because I'm the one who put it on
the menu. I thought of it, I pushed it, I
put it on the menu. Giant flop, total failure. If
(19:43):
you're a wannabe restaurant tour out there.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Don't do this okay.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
So the way that it worked was we got these peppers,
padrone peppers, that's a Spanish type of pepper. One of
the things they're sort of known for is about nine
out of ten sort of have a mild sort of
like shashi, right, you kind of roast them, maybe over
an open flame. That's how we like to do with
them at Flamont. Roast them over an open flame, get
some char they're really good, but one out of the
(20:09):
ten can be quite spicy, but you don't know which one.
So we thought that's sort of a fun game, sort
of rush and roulette style. So what we're gonna do
is we're gonna get the peppers, but we're gonna make
a tiny incision in one of the peppers, and that
hobb and Aro tincture I talked about earlier, where you
use ever clear to extract all the spice from a
hobb and arrow. We're going to put that in the
little incision we made, serve it to people, and one
(20:33):
of the peppers is going to be crazy hot. Won't
this be a fun game? Won't people find this exciting? Well,
the word excitement doesn't technically mean happiness. It just means
emotionally elevated, and it certainly emotionally elevated lots of people
to complain, to ask for this dish to be taken off,
(20:54):
and to write me bad YELP reviews. All right about quote,
they've ruined my meale on purpose.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Okay, Well, one person you could not make that dish
too hot for is Mike Jack from Mike Jack Eats Heat.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
We are so excited to have a special guest today
on our Chili, Spice and Everything nice episode. How could
we not want to invite the twenty time Guinness World
record holder for pepper eating. We're gonna have Mike Jack
here on the show from Mike Jack Eats Heat. Like
I said, twenty Guinness World records, including fastest time to
eat one hundred Carolina Reaper peppers. He's the four time
(21:33):
League of Fire Pepper World Eating Champion. He can also
be seen on Hulu's Last Disney Plus with their show
Super Hot. He's on Netflix with We Are the Champions.
Guinness has had him on their show in Italy, which
I won't try to pronounce because it's an Italian and
my Italian is terrible. But he's also been on vix
and he's got his own TV series on Rogers TV
(21:54):
in London. Jack Up the Heat. Welcome to Flavor Files,
Mike Jack.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
So before we kind of get into all of this
crazy pepper eating, I want to give people a little
bit frame of reference. So chili peppers come out, people
are wanting to sort of get a scale of how
hot they are. So this guy, Wilbur Scofield nineteen twelve
figures out a way to measure the amount of heat.
He calls it the Scoville scale and tell us a
(22:20):
little bit more so. The Scoville scale like a holapeno,
which I think most people are familiar with. How hot
is a holopeno?
Speaker 5 (22:27):
Yeah, so a jilipeno ranges between like a two thousand
and five thousand Scoville heat units.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Okay, Now, the hottest pepper I work with, you know
in my kitchen that I get in on a regular
basis is a hobanaro. So about how hot would that be?
Speaker 5 (22:41):
So haben arrow is around two hundred and fifty thousands,
so quite a bit hotter than a kalapenia.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Carolina reapers, you'll hold the record for what are they?
Speaker 5 (22:51):
And the Carolina reapers. They they average around a one
point six millions. They can get up to like about
two point two million.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
They say, so, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
When you do the competition, do they try to get
the lower ones for you? Or do they make you
eat the hotter ones?
Speaker 5 (23:08):
No, they usually like the competitions I do where it's
on like a world level, they usually start hot and
get hotter. So they'll usually start around like a million
Scovill heat units and then get hotter from there.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Mike, I have here a little package and I'm going
to subject myself to this in a bit Scotch bonnet,
and I got them at the grocery store and there's
no Skullville on here.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Scotch bonnets. What are they?
Speaker 5 (23:32):
Yeah, they're about the same as a hab and arrow
for heat, different flavor obviously, Yeah, for heat. Yeah, they're
about two hundred and fifty thousand Scoville heat units.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
I may have made a mistake.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Okay, so you have the record for eating one hundred
of these. How long does it take you to eat
a hundred Carolina reaper peppers?
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (23:52):
So the record I have for a yeah, fastest time
to eat one hundred is it's just over thirty six minutes.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Okay, so Dad, you're to eat one Scotch bonnet. Yeah,
and we'll see.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Well, well, well I'm gonna bite into the thing and
see how I.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Like.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Do I have to wear a rubber glove for this?
Speaker 5 (24:11):
You can if you want to. The outside of the
peppers aren't gonna aren't gonna do anything to you, but
the juices inside they can irritate your hands. They won't
actually physically burn you or anything, but it'll it'll Yeah,
it might give you a little.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Glove.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Do I go with the green or the yellow orange?
There's kind of an orange and there's a green.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Yeah, I would say, like usually like the you know,
they they start out green and then they turn you know, yellow,
and then orange and then red. So usually they're you know,
the greener ones aren't as hot, but they're not gonna
taste them.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
For the red, I don't, well, I don't. I don't
think I have Do I have red? I don't think
I have red.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
If you don't for an orange one, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Have an orange one.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
All right, I'm gonna bite into this and then the
rest of the segment, maybe just the two of you
and I do have a quick question, because I have
this ready in the freezer. Would ice cream work?
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Okay? I don't like milk?
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Oh yeah, that would that would help for sure.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Okay. Should I do it now? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Yeah, yeah, do it now. I'm just excited to watch
you do it. And it's a shame I couldn't find
any of those at the store. What a bummer?
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Hold it, Cole, hang on, I'll be back. I go
to goat the ice cream.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Okay, Well he goes and gets some ice cream. Mike,
Why does someone do this? How do you discover a
hidden talent for eating million plus Scoville peppers?
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (25:32):
I guess I do it just because, you know, I
like to challenge myself at something I'm good at. Co Far,
I can push myself stuff like that. You know, I've
obviously been doing it a long time. I didn't just
wake up one day and eat one hundred uh Carolina
River peppers.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
It.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
I'll started with a love of hot sauce. I just
loved hot sauce, got into it in college, and I
would just eat more and more of it, and eventually,
you know, I'd start searching for hotter sauces. So it
wouldn't have to use so much. Know, it would be
like almost more hot sauce than food on my plate.
So I'd have to look for hotter and hotter sauces.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
You know.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
It'd start out with just a couple dots on it,
and then you know, you know, each time I would
use it, I'd use more and more. After doing that
for about fifteen years or so, I was using Carolina
Reaper hot sauce kind of like ketchup. And at that
point one of my buddies was like, hey, there's people
on YouTube who are eating hot peppers, Like, maybe you
should give it a try because you're so good with
(26:27):
hot sauce. So started my YouTube channel Mike Jack Eats Heat.
One pepper in the first video did pretty good, and
each video I would just eat more and more. Eventually
started breaking records and yeah, kind of it's been eight
years that have been eating the peppers for so it's
kind of kind of really grown.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Like I have twenty seven bottles of hot sauce in
my house. Okay like hots hot, but I use it
for cooking. I feel like this is the dumbest thing
I ever did.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
Well, yeah, it's it's quite a kind of step up
from from the hot sauce is like, it's yeah, the
actual raw peppers them or you know, way hotter than
the peppers would be like in the hot sauce and
stuff like that, right, just because they're diluted with other ingredients,
they lose a bit of heat when you cook them
and stuff like that in the sauce. So yeah, it's
a lot of people are like, oh, I can't handle
(27:14):
hab and arrows because I like habin arrow hot sauce,
But the actual peppers themselves.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
Are a whole different ballgame for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Okay, so obviously we didn't get ten seconds before it
started to hit him pretty hard the first ten seconds
for you, do you feel it? Does it take ten minutes?
What is the sensation for a professional pepper eater?
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (27:33):
I guess yeah it usually usually it takes a bit
more than ten seconds for me, I guess just because
you know, I've built up a tolerance to the heat.
I do feel the heat, just not as much as
most people feel it, I guess, just because yeah, I've
built up that tolerance for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
So you said it's thirty six minutes to eat a
hundred of these, Yeah, and you don't get any ice
cream in between. No, so by the end of the hundred,
are you still enjoying it? Is it a good flavor
or is it just pain?
Speaker 5 (28:02):
It's pretty much well, it's just pain. And then also
just you know, your body releases a lot of you know,
endorphins and stuff like that, so you get kind of
like a they call it like a like a pepper high.
It's almost like almost like a runner's high sort of thing, right,
So you're kind of just kind of just kind of
just out of it. It's you know, kind of helping
with the pain, I guess, But yeah, it's really just
(28:23):
after eating one hundred, really just messed ups.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Okay, So I was gonna joke that I could I
can't even talk.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I was sold that I could eat thirty six Carolina
Reapers in thirty six years, but I don't think I
could eat one at all.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Yeah, most people don't want to take a second bite
for sure.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Totally cow.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah, but this one that I had just a review here,
I had, Scotch wonded, that's no, we're close to the
heat of those Carolina Reapers you're eating.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Yeah, not really crazy.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
I like you and everything, but I'm really curious. We've
all eaten hot peppers, not to your scale, but I'm
a little concerned. I understand how hot peppers when i'm them,
I understand that sensation. But when you've eaten a hundred
of these, talk to me about the next day, what
does that feel like?
Speaker 5 (29:07):
Well, I think I bounced back quicker than most people.
I'm fine the next day, Like by the morning, I'm
I'm all right, but it can be a really rough
night for sure.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Well, they're not going in, are they hot? Coming out?
Speaker 5 (29:19):
To be honest, I've actually looking it up. I guess
it's like a genetic mutation or something I've actually never had,
like a burden butt or anything like that. That's kind
of my superpower, I guess, right if I if I
did when I was, you know, starting out, like maybe
I wouldn't have pushed myself as far as I've gotten.
But I've never never had that for some reason.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Wow, Well that's amazing. I don't think you Dad will
be doing this challenge anytime soon. Looks like one bite
of the Scotch pot it has pretty much wiped you out.
But thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
We're being here.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Well, no problem, Thanks for having me look them up
on Mike Jack eats Heat and by the way, for Canadians,
he has his own line of hot sauces.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
And so there's a gift idea for you coming up. Mike.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
And while we're talking tangy, this episode of Flavor Files
is brought to you by pickled milk. Pickling has been
one of the most effective methods of preserving or extending
the life of food for over four thousand years. Milk
is the essential nutrient rich nectar of life. Finally someone
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(30:23):
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(30:45):
h i l e. S is available at flavorfiles dot com, here,
on the radio and wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
For this next segment, we thought it would be great
to talk about hot sauces. What are some of the
ones we like? What are some great ones that you
can find in the grocery store. So we're supposed to
be tasting through these hot sauces and talking about them.
But Dad, you just ate a two hundred and fifty
thousand Scoville unit Scotch bonnet and a bowl of ice cream.
(31:14):
How are you feeling over there?
Speaker 1 (31:16):
The ice cream has been quite helpful and it's finally
starting to settle down.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Like I like hot sauce, and as I said, I
have twenty seven bottles of hot sauce. But I always
use hot sauce in and pepper's in cooking. I don't
sit there and munch on them. That was I didn't
eat a Scotch bonnet. I took a bite of a
Scotch bonnet and that's all I ate. And it's just
that's the hottest thing I've ever had. But I'm recovering
and I will do the sauces. I'm in for the
(31:44):
whole thing now.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Well, I'm really glad, by the way, for anybody who's
eating a pepper or eating any of these sauces and
they find that it's a little too much. Milk and
ice cream do a really great job. It binds to
the capsasin and helps remove it from your palate where
water just spreads it around. So you had a good
call with the ice cream. Okay, thanks, So let's get
(32:06):
into a few of these hot sauces. One I asked
you to bring in, and I think this is a
great one for people who are not big on super spicy.
We spoke earlier about how to work with peppers if
you're not really big on spices, and so one of
the ones I like green chilula. It's made out of
holapano's and peblanos, and I think it has a really
(32:29):
great flavor. It does have a kick, but it has
less of a kick than it has a really wonderful
vegetable flavor, and I love it for that reason. I
love it in chili chiles at breakfast, I love it
in tacos, and I think the vegetable note is the
thing that I'm always going for because I don't get
the heat kick out of it.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Okay, what you're using a spoon, I'm supposed to just
drink this stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Well, I mean technically, if you use a spoon, you're
eating it. Okay, if you use a straw, you're drinking it.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
I thought I would put a little bit on the
end of my finger, but how many drops?
Speaker 3 (33:00):
So this stuff, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
How brave are you feeling after that Scotch bonnet?
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (33:03):
I mean, how bad can it be?
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Well that's what you said about the Scotch bonnet.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Well, that's got a very nice flavor to it.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
This on a taco would just be beautiful.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Absolutely. I love Salsaverda. Salsaverite is made out of tomatillos,
It's made out of herbs, it's made out of Houlapano's
really different than a red salsa, and so obviously it
has a kick to it. If you don't love kick,
it does have that. But I think it has such
a great flavor. If I'm hungover, the thing I want
more than anything as a breakfast burrito. I want some barbacoa,
(33:35):
I want some eggs, I want a little bacon in there,
and I want green chilula.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
It has a sweetness to it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Absolutely. That's one thing I love about jlapanos is they're
more vegtle than they are spicy. In fact, the jlapeno
is actually getting less spicy over time. It's so popular
that they grow them now and they don't get as spicy.
We can go into that another time, but they've literally
been bred to be less spicy so they can sell
more of them.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
You told me to go out and get some sirachia. Yeah,
and I did find siracha. This is the only sirachi
I could find. I had to go to a couple
of stores, but I found a siricha sauce made by Tabasco.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
That's very interesting, because so it's not a problem and
we should definitely try it. But when I think of
Sri racha, I think of a different product. So let's
try it really quick and then I'll tell you sort
of the story of Sri Racha because it's such a
fun story.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Okay, So same thing. I'm just putting some of this
on a spoon.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
So this is Tabasco brand Sri Racha. Tabasco is from Louisiana,
right outside of New Orleans. They make a fermented hot
sauce lots of vinegar. It actually goes in barrels just
like whiskey or tequila wood, and so it has sort
of this very fermented flavor. This is definitely different than
Sri rocha that I'm normally used to. But it has
(34:52):
a good flavor. I like it, I would use it,
but I still don't think it's as good as what
I believe to be the true Sri Racha.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Okay, but I could on a spoon and eat it.
It was.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Or maybe it's just like my whole senses have been
dulled now from that Scotch bought it pepperine.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
It could be maybe you're just a little dead inside.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Maybe that's happened.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Okay, So let's talk Sree Rocher really quick. So if
you're familiar with this guy, anybody who can see a
video version of this, So Sree Rocha, it's got the
rooster on the front, it's got the green cap. This is,
in my opinion, the true Sri Racha. So little bit
of background story. There's a town in Thailand. It's called
Sea Racha, and in nineteen thirty two, I think it was.
(35:36):
There's a woman who makes a hot sauce there in
this style. It's a little bit sweet, it's very garlic forward,
and then it has this clear garlic flavor. She makes.
This kind of becomes a local thing. Fast forward to
the eighties. There's a gentleman who moves to Los Angeles,
misses the chili sauce flavor he's familiar with. He's actually Vietnamese,
(35:58):
but he comes over and he says, I'm this chili sauce.
I'm gonna make one. He starts this company called Hoifong Foods.
His birth animal, like Chinese zodiac, is a rooster, so
he puts that on the bottle, classic green cap, and
he starts producing this like crazy. He trademarks Hoyfong Foods.
He trademarks the rooster. He doesn't trademark the word Sri Racha.
(36:22):
He then obviously spends his career popularizing this sauce, making
people love it, but not protecting the number one word
everybody identifies with it. He then, this poor guy ends
up having a chili shortage. So he's very particular. He
wants one type of pepper. He wants it made a
(36:43):
specific way. They have no social media, they have no
brand deals. They're very much we make the sauce. That's it, right,
So he has a shortage of peppers. So all these
people like Tabasco that we just capitalized are talked about,
go and capitalize on the shortage and say, yeah, we mix.
So what's funny is the original green Cap Rooster bottle
(37:04):
has now been lost store placements because they can't produce enough,
and all these other brands have bitten into the free
racha market.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
All right, So if you want to support actually, if
you wanted to support the original, you'd have to go
back to Thailand and find the lady.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Well, you'd have to go back to nineteen thirty two,
which is significantly more difficult.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Yes, okay, but.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I love it. It's not as hot. It has a
little bit of sweetness to it, a lot of garlic flavor.
This is probably my go to hot sauce. Kind of
just my ketch, all in my fridge all the time.
Put it on everything, even sushi.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Okay, you're in Texas with your restaurants, so it's Texas,
which is a lot more spice forward than many other locales,
that's for sure. But even then, you're not using something
like the Scotch bonnet thing I foolishly ate.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
We've definitely cooked with Scotch bonnets before. They're about as
hot as a hobb and aro pepper, and you know,
we'll cook with those, but in general, no, and these
things are just too hot, and we definitely don't serve
them straight up. We have done like a pickled holapeno before.
But one of the things that's good about that is
when you cook things, the scoville unit dies down some,
(38:11):
the heat dies down. Also, if we pickle it, we
can then remove it from that liquid and introducing it
to vinegar and then draining it basically washes some of
that spice away so you can get more of the flavor.
And that's a little bit how we're able to show
off the flavor of these peppers without the spice because
no straight Scotch bonnets. That is not a thing that
we can feed to people. It's irresponsible.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah, you're welcome, and I hope you're having a great time.
Where working off all of that spice.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Well, ice cream did it.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
So there are lots of hot sauces out there, right Tabasco.
We mentioned a little bit. Taylor, my business partner who
I do everything with at the restaurants, we met North Carolina.
So his favorite, because it's from North Carolina, is Texas Pete.
So it's so funny it's Texas Pete. It has a
cowboy on the front of the label like it's this
Texas hot sauce. But when you look on the back,
(39:02):
it says Winston Salem, North Carolina on West fourth Street. Okay,
so it's like, doesn't seem Texas at all, But this
is this does a lot of work at our restaurant.
Lots of times Texas peat will show up. But there
is one sort of quasi hot sauce I wanted to
recommend to everybody. It's called chili crisp or chili crunch.
You can find this in a lot of stores now,
(39:22):
it's really picking up popularity. What it is is it's
basically dried garlic, dried chilies, a little bit of oil.
So you can see here, if you're watching it, you
can see it doesn't look like a sauce. It looks
more like dried garlic and chilies, and it's crunchy. And
I love this condiment. I put on everything.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Now.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
You make an avocado toast, it's amazing. You kind of
put it in tacos, you put it on fajitas. It's
really wonderful. It's got a great crunch, good flavor, and
you should absolutely look for that in the grocery store.
It's one of my favorite condiments right now.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
All right, Well, that's it for us for this week.
That's certainly enough for me.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
In addition to here on the radio, you can find
us at flavorfiles dot com. That's p H I L e.
S flavorfiles dot com. Wherever you get your podcasts, it's
Apple or Spotify or iHeart any of those places. And
by the way, at flavorfiles dot com, you can leave
(40:23):
us a review. We're going to respond to reviews. When
our episode next week is all about reviews, we'll talk
to our restaurant reviewer see how Tanner reacts to those
kinds of responses to the restaurant world. That's next week
on flavor files
Okay, I'm afraid of this one. I think this episode
of Flavor Files might kill me. I'm Jerryega, broadcaster and
I'm with my son Tannerregar, who was a restaurant tour
a chef, a bartender, and we're going to talk chilis
and spice, and later on we're going to have a
world champion hot spice eater on and I'm going to
subject myself to a bunch of hot sauce and chili's here.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to see how you do
because growing up you were always the hot sauce guy.
You like the chilies, you like the hot sauce. We
were children, we did not care for them, but you
were the person. I remember one time we were at
Grandma's house and you got down to this bottle of
Tabasco sauce. That thing looked thirty years old, and you
just I don't your mother was shook when she saw
(00:44):
how much hot sauce you applied to that food. I
don't think she had as much spice in her life
as we're going to consume later at the end of
the show.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Well, you know, the hot sauce is the one thing
It's just that when we have Mike Jack, the world
champion spice eater, on the show, Oh, I'm going to
try some Scotch bonnet and I'm not talking about Scotch
bond at hot Sauce here. I'm talking about biting into
the actual pepper. And I'm quite worried about that, to
be honest.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I unfortunately wasn't able to find any at the market,
so I won't be able to participate. But we've got
that coming up to start off with. Here with our
ammuz booze, our sort of drink of the day if
you will. If you're in Texas, every restaurant menu has
a spicy margarita on it, and the spicy margarita is
one of the top selling cocktails at every single restaurant.
(01:31):
So I made one in our chili, spice and everything
nice episode, and it's a classic margarita. We're just adding spice.
There are three ways to add spice to a margarita.
The first is, of course, buy some peppers, muddle them
in your shaker and throw them in there. Jalapenos are
a super classic option to do this. One issue I
have with jalapenos is they're super variable in terms of
(01:53):
how hot they are, so you don't necessarily get to
control how much spice you add. The second is to
grab your favorite hot sauce. Like we said, we're gonna
be doing some hot sauce taste testing later. So if
you have a hot sauce you like, you do know
how to control how much you add, and you can
add those specific flavors. But hot sauces might be fermented,
or they might have vinegars, or they're a blend of
(02:14):
different things. So my favorite way to add spice to
a margarita is to actually make a tincture. Tincture is
just a very fancy word for something. I steeped and
ever clear. That way, I got like a very pure flavor.
So think of it like vanilla extract, right, put vanilla
beans into ever Clear and I get pure vanilla extraction.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
I like to do this.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I take holapanos, or I take hob and arrows. I
cut them in half so that the alcohol has access
to the middle. Put them in the jar, pour ever
Clear on top. Wait a week, and all of a sudden,
when I do it hobb and arrows, I get this bright,
beautiful orange tincture. It's an even heat. After I drain it,
kind of throw the peppers away. If you leave it
long enough, they'll actually lose all orange color and they
(02:57):
come out this sort of like very gray color. All
the alcohol extracts it. Throw those away. You have a tincture.
It lasts forever, and you can add it to anything
you want, almost like your home hot sauce. And it
has a great flavor. And that's how we make cocktails
at our restaurant.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Okay, and then because you have your own, after you've
made your first drink, you're gonna know how much you
want to put in a drink.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Absolutely. Something we used to do at the restaurant was
we would offer spicy margarita level one to five.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Well, yeah, so I've tried.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
That, yeah, and you might remember level five was dangerous.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
But you can sort of control it and it gives
you the power to control the heat and you don't
have to worry about having fresh peppers in your kitchen,
so you can just have that heat whenever you need it.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Well, you enjoy your margarita.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
While we think about this, why are chilies spicy? What
is it that makes them different than another plant?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
So the chili has an interesting evolutionary tactic. So the
thing that makes it spicy is called cap sasin. When
it burns your tongue, that's the chemical cap sason triggering
your pain receptor, the reason the chili evolved this way.
I don't know how the chili figured this out, so
that's beyond me. I'm not a biologist, but the chili
(04:07):
pepper figures out somehow. I guess that mammals can feel
pain when they eat very spicy things, but birds can't.
So if I wanted, if I'm a plant and I'm
somehow sentient in talking to my plant friends, I want
our seed to go as far as possible, spread the
peppers everywhere. Well, birds travel over a farther distance than mammals,
(04:30):
so if we can get birds to eat us instead
of mammals, will travel more so. The spicier the pepper gets,
the less likely a mammal is to eat it. And
then a bird, which can't receive capsaicin, they're literally incapable
of tasting capsaicin. The birds will say, wow, oh my god,
look at that beautiful fruit that's down there that nothing
else is eating. I better go eat that. They eat
(04:51):
it and they can spread the seed farther. This is why,
by the way that some people, some like very boutique
chicken farmers, will feed either red bell pepper or other
types of peppers, and chilis two birds like two chickens,
because they can't taste it. And if you feed them
lots of red chilies, the yolks start to turn red
and they have like a spice quality to them that
(05:13):
you can perceive, but the chicken can't.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Wow. And then these weren't originally all around the world.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
No, so we think, now, go chi chang out of Korea,
or we think about bird's eye chilies out of Thailand,
but Chili's actually involved in the United States, or not
the United States, but the Americas. So it's they're actually
from the Americas. And people definitely talk about all the
bad things that sort of the Colombian Exchange created, but
(05:40):
one of the great things that they created was the
spread of chilies. Portuguese and Spanish traders moving products around
the world started spreading chilies to other places, and these
chilies resulted in things getting to China, right that becomes
Seschuan peppercorns grow out of that, they get to Korea,
like we talked about with the go chi cho peprika
(06:01):
comes up in Hungry, Mediterranean, Northern African spices. All of
these chilies originated from the Americas and started spreading in
the seventeen and eighteen hundreds to all of these other places,
which has been really cool because then you look hundreds
of years later and we think, but Hungarian paprika is
so different than a Mexican habinniero, which is so different
(06:22):
than a Seshuan peppercorn, and these sort of fundamental components
of regional cuisine evolved over several hundred years, all coming
from those original peppers.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Okay, let's talk about then, why to cook with chilis.
I mean, I'm still sitting here with trepidation about eating
this pepper. I'm going to eat when we have the
world champion hot pepper eater.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Mike Jack on the show coming up. But before we get.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
There, I like hot sauces and peppers. But despite what
you said about what I did at my mom's house
your grandma, essentially I like to mix them in to
create flavor, hot heat with the food, not punishing myself. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Absolutely, you know it's funny because sometimes the punishing is
what makes it so fun, I see, right, or it
makes it fun to serve it to other people. Well right,
but sort of that like spice component is really a
component of the flavors peppers. By the way, I forgot
to mention this before. Part of the reason Columbus came
to the Americas was because he wanted to find spices.
(07:23):
He was looking for black pepper specifically, So he shows up,
he finds something that spicy and says, well, it's not
black pepper, but it is pepper. So the reason chillis
which were originally grown like the Aztecs, the Incans, they
used to grow these, right, But he calls them pepper
the same way that he called the people he found Indians,
because he didn't have a way to reconcile what he
(07:46):
knew with this new discovery. And it's funny that the
word pepper, hundreds of years later is still in use.
But peppers are a wonderful thing. Obviously they're used to
create a great spice component, but they can also be
really used well in flavors. And that's why I like
to kind of find things. There are these sort of
iconic dishes right Mole in Mexico where it's chili's and
(08:09):
it's tomatoes, and it's chocolate actually, or kimchi. Kimchi is
cabbage that's been fermented, so sort of think sauer kraut,
but then it's had lots of time. Shrimp actually helps
it get the fermentation going, and then chili's kind of
get it going. Or paprika, which leads to paprikash, which
is a very Hungarian dish that you are probably familiar with.
(08:31):
Paprika is also really popular in Spanish cuisine, so there's
a lot of cuisines that evolved to incorporate the chili
as a flavor component, not just spicy. And that's something
I definitely want to talk about in that second segment
we're doing today about maybe I don't love spicy food,
but how can I make it taste great and incorporate
this as a flavor instead.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Okay, yeah, That's always something that I find a little
interesting is I have a dish and I think, okay,
i'll take this hot sauce and I'll put a couple
drops in there. Oh, I haven't noticed it yet, put
a little more in there, and after a while you
start to notice it. It's like using salt just you
keep adding until you get the flavor that you want.
And I'm never actually looking for something that's going to
(09:13):
make me or anybody I serve the food too go.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
You know, it's funny being here in Texas, sometimes you
do want it to be hot that way. It's interesting
how eating food that's hot can make you sweat, and
then that cools you down in sort of this weird paradox.
You start to sweat, you start to feel it, but
because now your body's sweating and regulating heat, it can
make us feel cooler even though it made our mouth hotter.
(09:40):
It doesn't really make sense to me, but it is
a true thing I have experienced.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Okay, So that would be why the spices became popular
in places in South America, Mexico, the deeper southern states
like Texas, and not necessarily here in Ontario.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Where I am.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
I wouldn't say Ontario and the Great Plains of Canada
is where I've experienced very spicy cuisine. I wouldn't say
growing up in Gilbert Plains, Manitoba, as you did, was
probably a hot spot, if you will. But the idea
of hot weather breeding hot chili's breeding hot cuisine. They
(10:15):
definitely marry together, and I think that's why you see
a lot of the most spicy pepper's most spicy cuisine
coming from those regions. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
All right, well, this is Flavor Files.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
I'm Jerry Yegar, He's Tanor Agar, and we're doing a
special here on spices and if you love hate. This
episode of Flavor Files is brought to you by suvid Yoga.
Each session guides you through gentle stretches and into alignment
while you relax in a perfectly temperature controlled water bath
sealed in a BPA free plastic suit. Certified instructors guide
(10:48):
your breathing while ensuring your relaxation is consistent from edge
to center, whether you're looking to reduce stress, increased flexibility,
or just tend to rize your tense muscles souvid yoga.
As you covered souvid Yoga inner piece at exactly one
hundred and thirty five degrees for two hours, We're going
to talk to a guy who can eat more hot
(11:10):
spices than anybody in the world. Certified by they'll Guinness
Book of World Records. He has twenty records. Mike Jack
eats heat and we'll talk about turning chilies into hot
sauce as well.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
We're here talking about chilies today, and obviously the thing
they're most famous for is being spicy, but what a
lot of people don't appreciate is that they're also really flavorful.
And a lot of people think that they're afraid of spice,
that they don't want spicy food, so they sort of
write off peppers altogether. And I think that's a real disappointment.
(11:45):
I think you're robbing yourself of so many wonderful flavors
when you do that, whether it's home, in your kitchen
or if it's at a restaurant. So one of the
things I really wanted to go over with you today
are some of the dishes that I love and some
of the ways to use peppers for flavor or even
if you don't love spice.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
I'm Jerry, I got broadcaster. He's Tannaregar chef, bartender and
restaurant tour. Let's start with chili's are not as much
about fire as they are about flavor.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Absolutely, these peppers. When you think a pepper, a red
bell pepper, a green bell pepper, and all the bell peppers,
which by the way, are all the exact same plant.
They're just different stages of ripeness. So they start green
and then they gradually turn red. So if you're at
the store and you're buying these, and you think you're
buying all these different vegetables, you're buying one vegetable. It's
(12:37):
sort of like buying a green banana versus a yellow
banana versus a brown banana. That's all that's happening. But
a bell pepper is a pepper. It has a really
wonderful flavor. Many people who think maybe, oh I don't
like spicy food do think, oh, well, roasted red bell
peppers are so delicious perfect. Then you're exactly engaging in
what I'm talking about. There's a dish we have it
(12:58):
on the menu at one of our restaurants from Syria
or Turkey called Muhammara, and it's roasted red bell peppers.
You put it in the food processor, you add some walnuts,
and then that's it. A little bit of Greek olive oil,
a little salt, and you get a dish that has
a wonderful pepper flavor, a wonderful sort of roasted pepper flavor,
(13:20):
but it isn't spicy. And that's one of the sort
of the classic dishes I love to talk to people
about when they're having peppers. Another would be taking little
baby red peppers a bichio peppers really popular sometimes they're
also called book club peppers and stuffing them with goat cheese.
This is a really classic Spanish tapa. And again it's
(13:40):
more about the flavor of the chili. It's about the
richness of the goat cheese than it is about being spicy. Spicy, spicy,
and those are things that I would say everybody can
enjoy even if you don't like hot.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
All right, Well, there's there are levels of it, right,
Like they start with something like when you mentioned a
roasted bell pepper. I mean, you can roll that up
and just take it out of there, cool it done,
and just eat it. You don't even need to cool
it down. You can just eat it and you don't
have to be a person who's ready for hot spices.
That's about as mild as cats, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, Picchio peppers, peppido peppers, they're they're all like this
sort of The next step up might be some of
the ones that are a little bit more smoky than
they are hot. A chipotle pepper is just a jlapano
that's been smoked and preserved. Okay, So if you're a
(14:32):
person who has had a holopano and you say, well,
that's not too spicy for me, then a Chipotle shouldn't
be too spicy for you. Either you can buy them
they come in little cans lots of times, or you
see them made into sauces. Obviously, there's a sort of
famous chain called Chipotle. I think a couple people have
maybe heard of it. Yep, and that namesake pepper It's
(14:53):
more smoky. Peprika is another one. We spoke just a
second ago about Hungarian peprika. How it's really smoky. And
I love peprika as a seasoning. I love to put
it on pizzas, I love to fold it into sauces,
and it has this wonderful smoky flavor it in the chipotle,
which are perfect for adding to something, whether it's a margarita,
(15:14):
whether it's just folding it into tacos or kind of
just adding it to whatever you generally tend to make.
I also like to take paprika or chipotles and add
them to chicken one of those like classic meals where
I sort of just throw chicken in my crockpot, maybe
with a stick of butter and a little bit of chipotle,
and then I just let it cook. It sort of
breaks down, comes pull apart chicken, and I can kind
(15:37):
of use that on anything, salads, tacos, whatever. It's a
great meal, pep food, and you get the flavors more
than you are able to get the spice. Some of
the dried peppers do this too. Ancho chilis have more
of a sort of a chocolate note. Guahio peppers are
a little bit more raisiny in flavor. I also love
(16:00):
dry peppers because they're not going to go bad on
me the way some fresh preppers can. I have this
bad habit I think a lot of people do. I
go to the grocery store and I'm so excited by
all the little goodies I find laying all over the
grocery store, and I bring them home, and all of
a sudden, I get into my work week. I come
back five days later and I open the fridge door
(16:23):
and all the produce I was so excited about has
gently gone bad over the course of the week. And
I love dried peppers for that reason is they're not
going to do that to me, They won't let me
down and I can just reach into the pantry and
grab them.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Do you drive them yourself?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I don't drive them myself. Could you drive them yourself? Absolutely,
But when someone is going to do it at a
professional level better than I would have, not charged me
very much for it. That's sort of my ideal scenario.
Maybe some people don't have the bounty of Mexican markets
that I do here in Texas, but dried peppers are
(16:59):
really easy to come by, and I would absolutely not
bother with making them myself. Just buy them, and then
they're so easy to use.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Okay, what kinds of things would you do in a
dish to balance the fact when you're using a pepper
in a dish unless you've done, as we said, the
bell peppers and you just want to eat them because
you can. But if you're using the hotter peppers for
the flavor, what do you balance it with?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Sugar is always a good component, having a little sugar,
having a little acid, and also I find herbal flavors
are really good to sort of balance out how spicy
a pepper might be. I have certainly been guilty of
lots of people. You sort of cook by sight, and
I would say one of the challenges of becoming professional
(17:41):
is hubris where I'm making something and I say I
know what I'm doing, and then all of a sudden
I try it and to go, oh God, this is
way too spicy. And so a little bit of sugar
can help you, maybe just a little bit of water,
more of whatever else was in that pan, to try
to thin it out a little bit. But another thing
that's great for it. Dairy is fantastic for cutting spice.
(18:05):
So one thing I like to do is combine butter
or cream plus chili's because the way that the dairy
will combine with the chili helps me get a little
bit more flavor out of the pepper without getting all
of the spice. So I find there's this sauce that
Grace and I make all the time at home. We
(18:26):
call it creamy grain sauce because it doesn't have a
different name. It's basically holapano's cilantro Greek yogurt, a little
lime juice, and you just put it all on the
food processor and we put in tons of holapanos. But
it doesn't get too spicy because the Greek yogurt helps
cut that and if you find that you're making something
(18:48):
that's way too spicy. I have yet to discover a
dish that didn't benefit from a little cream or a
little butter. I'm very Julia Child that way, and so
that be sort of my go to is. Oh no,
I have to add butter. What a shame.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Okay, I'm gonna put you on the hotspot here because
way back when you first started your first restaurant and
you were experimenting, you did a dish which I think
you're still proud of, but it didn't work out with
the customers. It hot Piper roulette, I think you called it.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah. Have you ever heard a musician talk about how
this should have been a hit but the public doesn't
appreciate it. Yeah, so Russian roulette peppers should have been
a hit, but the public didn't appreciate it. This is
our worst review dish of all time. I'll happily talk
about this because I'm the one who put it on
the menu. I thought of it, I pushed it, I
put it on the menu. Giant flop, total failure. If
(19:43):
you're a wannabe restaurant tour out there.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Don't do this okay.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
So the way that it worked was we got these peppers,
padrone peppers, that's a Spanish type of pepper. One of
the things they're sort of known for is about nine
out of ten sort of have a mild sort of
like shashi, right, you kind of roast them, maybe over
an open flame. That's how we like to do with
them at Flamont. Roast them over an open flame, get
some char they're really good, but one out of the
(20:09):
ten can be quite spicy, but you don't know which one.
So we thought that's sort of a fun game, sort
of rush and roulette style. So what we're gonna do
is we're gonna get the peppers, but we're gonna make
a tiny incision in one of the peppers, and that
hobb and Aro tincture I talked about earlier, where you
use ever clear to extract all the spice from a
hobb and arrow. We're going to put that in the
little incision we made, serve it to people, and one
(20:33):
of the peppers is going to be crazy hot. Won't
this be a fun game? Won't people find this exciting? Well,
the word excitement doesn't technically mean happiness. It just means
emotionally elevated, and it certainly emotionally elevated lots of people
to complain, to ask for this dish to be taken off,
(20:54):
and to write me bad YELP reviews. All right about quote,
they've ruined my meale on purpose.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Okay, Well, one person you could not make that dish
too hot for is Mike Jack from Mike Jack Eats Heat.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
We are so excited to have a special guest today
on our Chili, Spice and Everything nice episode. How could
we not want to invite the twenty time Guinness World
record holder for pepper eating. We're gonna have Mike Jack
here on the show from Mike Jack Eats Heat. Like
I said, twenty Guinness World records, including fastest time to
eat one hundred Carolina Reaper peppers. He's the four time
(21:33):
League of Fire Pepper World Eating Champion. He can also
be seen on Hulu's Last Disney Plus with their show
Super Hot. He's on Netflix with We Are the Champions.
Guinness has had him on their show in Italy, which
I won't try to pronounce because it's an Italian and
my Italian is terrible. But he's also been on vix
and he's got his own TV series on Rogers TV
(21:54):
in London. Jack Up the Heat. Welcome to Flavor Files,
Mike Jack.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
So before we kind of get into all of this
crazy pepper eating, I want to give people a little
bit frame of reference. So chili peppers come out, people
are wanting to sort of get a scale of how
hot they are. So this guy, Wilbur Scofield nineteen twelve
figures out a way to measure the amount of heat.
He calls it the Scoville scale and tell us a
(22:20):
little bit more so. The Scoville scale like a holapeno,
which I think most people are familiar with. How hot
is a holopeno?
Speaker 5 (22:27):
Yeah, so a jilipeno ranges between like a two thousand
and five thousand Scoville heat units.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Okay, Now, the hottest pepper I work with, you know
in my kitchen that I get in on a regular
basis is a hobanaro. So about how hot would that be?
Speaker 5 (22:41):
So haben arrow is around two hundred and fifty thousands,
so quite a bit hotter than a kalapenia.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Carolina reapers, you'll hold the record for what are they?
Speaker 5 (22:51):
And the Carolina reapers. They they average around a one
point six millions. They can get up to like about
two point two million.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
They say, so, oh my god.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
When you do the competition, do they try to get
the lower ones for you? Or do they make you
eat the hotter ones?
Speaker 5 (23:08):
No, they usually like the competitions I do where it's
on like a world level, they usually start hot and
get hotter. So they'll usually start around like a million
Scovill heat units and then get hotter from there.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Mike, I have here a little package and I'm going
to subject myself to this in a bit Scotch bonnet,
and I got them at the grocery store and there's
no Skullville on here.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Scotch bonnets. What are they?
Speaker 5 (23:32):
Yeah, they're about the same as a hab and arrow
for heat, different flavor obviously, Yeah, for heat. Yeah, they're
about two hundred and fifty thousand Scoville heat units.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
I may have made a mistake.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Okay, so you have the record for eating one hundred
of these. How long does it take you to eat
a hundred Carolina reaper peppers?
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (23:52):
So the record I have for a yeah, fastest time
to eat one hundred is it's just over thirty six minutes.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Okay, so Dad, you're to eat one Scotch bonnet. Yeah,
and we'll see.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Well, well, well I'm gonna bite into the thing and
see how I.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Like.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Do I have to wear a rubber glove for this?
Speaker 5 (24:11):
You can if you want to. The outside of the
peppers aren't gonna aren't gonna do anything to you, but
the juices inside they can irritate your hands. They won't
actually physically burn you or anything, but it'll it'll Yeah,
it might give you a little.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Glove.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Do I go with the green or the yellow orange?
There's kind of an orange and there's a green.
Speaker 5 (24:31):
Yeah, I would say, like usually like the you know,
they they start out green and then they turn you know, yellow,
and then orange and then red. So usually they're you know,
the greener ones aren't as hot, but they're not gonna
taste them.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
For the red, I don't, well, I don't. I don't
think I have Do I have red? I don't think
I have red.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
If you don't for an orange one, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Have an orange one.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
All right, I'm gonna bite into this and then the
rest of the segment, maybe just the two of you
and I do have a quick question, because I have
this ready in the freezer. Would ice cream work?
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Okay? I don't like milk?
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Oh yeah, that would that would help for sure.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Okay. Should I do it now? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Yeah, yeah, do it now. I'm just excited to watch
you do it. And it's a shame I couldn't find
any of those at the store. What a bummer?
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Hold it, Cole, hang on, I'll be back. I go
to goat the ice cream.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Okay, Well he goes and gets some ice cream. Mike,
Why does someone do this? How do you discover a
hidden talent for eating million plus Scoville peppers?
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (25:32):
I guess I do it just because, you know, I
like to challenge myself at something I'm good at. Co Far,
I can push myself stuff like that. You know, I've
obviously been doing it a long time. I didn't just
wake up one day and eat one hundred uh Carolina
River peppers.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
It.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
I'll started with a love of hot sauce. I just
loved hot sauce, got into it in college, and I
would just eat more and more of it, and eventually,
you know, I'd start searching for hotter sauces. So it
wouldn't have to use so much. Know, it would be
like almost more hot sauce than food on my plate.
So I'd have to look for hotter and hotter sauces.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
You know.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
It'd start out with just a couple dots on it,
and then you know, you know, each time I would
use it, I'd use more and more. After doing that
for about fifteen years or so, I was using Carolina
Reaper hot sauce kind of like ketchup. And at that
point one of my buddies was like, hey, there's people
on YouTube who are eating hot peppers, Like, maybe you
should give it a try because you're so good with
(26:27):
hot sauce. So started my YouTube channel Mike Jack Eats Heat.
One pepper in the first video did pretty good, and
each video I would just eat more and more. Eventually
started breaking records and yeah, kind of it's been eight
years that have been eating the peppers for so it's
kind of kind of really grown.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Like I have twenty seven bottles of hot sauce in
my house. Okay like hots hot, but I use it
for cooking. I feel like this is the dumbest thing
I ever did.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
Well, yeah, it's it's quite a kind of step up
from from the hot sauce is like, it's yeah, the
actual raw peppers them or you know, way hotter than
the peppers would be like in the hot sauce and
stuff like that, right, just because they're diluted with other ingredients,
they lose a bit of heat when you cook them
and stuff like that in the sauce. So yeah, it's
a lot of people are like, oh, I can't handle
(27:14):
hab and arrows because I like habin arrow hot sauce,
But the actual peppers themselves.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
Are a whole different ballgame for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Okay, so obviously we didn't get ten seconds before it
started to hit him pretty hard the first ten seconds
for you, do you feel it? Does it take ten minutes?
What is the sensation for a professional pepper eater?
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (27:33):
I guess yeah it usually usually it takes a bit
more than ten seconds for me, I guess just because
you know, I've built up a tolerance to the heat.
I do feel the heat, just not as much as
most people feel it, I guess, just because yeah, I've
built up that tolerance for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
So you said it's thirty six minutes to eat a
hundred of these, Yeah, and you don't get any ice
cream in between. No, so by the end of the hundred,
are you still enjoying it? Is it a good flavor
or is it just pain?
Speaker 5 (28:02):
It's pretty much well, it's just pain. And then also
just you know, your body releases a lot of you know,
endorphins and stuff like that, so you get kind of
like a they call it like a like a pepper high.
It's almost like almost like a runner's high sort of thing, right,
So you're kind of just kind of just kind of
just out of it. It's you know, kind of helping
with the pain, I guess, But yeah, it's really just
(28:23):
after eating one hundred, really just messed ups.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Okay, So I was gonna joke that I could I
can't even talk.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
I was sold that I could eat thirty six Carolina
Reapers in thirty six years, but I don't think I
could eat one at all.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Yeah, most people don't want to take a second bite
for sure.
Speaker 3 (28:39):
Totally cow.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah, but this one that I had just a review here,
I had, Scotch wonded, that's no, we're close to the
heat of those Carolina Reapers you're eating.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Yeah, not really crazy.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
I like you and everything, but I'm really curious. We've
all eaten hot peppers, not to your scale, but I'm
a little concerned. I understand how hot peppers when i'm them,
I understand that sensation. But when you've eaten a hundred
of these, talk to me about the next day, what
does that feel like?
Speaker 5 (29:07):
Well, I think I bounced back quicker than most people.
I'm fine the next day, Like by the morning, I'm
I'm all right, but it can be a really rough
night for sure.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Well, they're not going in, are they hot? Coming out?
Speaker 5 (29:19):
To be honest, I've actually looking it up. I guess
it's like a genetic mutation or something I've actually never had,
like a burden butt or anything like that. That's kind
of my superpower, I guess, right if I if I
did when I was, you know, starting out, like maybe
I wouldn't have pushed myself as far as I've gotten.
But I've never never had that for some reason.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Wow, Well that's amazing. I don't think you Dad will
be doing this challenge anytime soon. Looks like one bite
of the Scotch pot it has pretty much wiped you out.
But thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
We're being here.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Well, no problem, Thanks for having me look them up
on Mike Jack eats Heat and by the way, for Canadians,
he has his own line of hot sauces.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
And so there's a gift idea for you coming up. Mike.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
And while we're talking tangy, this episode of Flavor Files
is brought to you by pickled milk. Pickling has been
one of the most effective methods of preserving or extending
the life of food for over four thousand years. Milk
is the essential nutrient rich nectar of life. Finally someone
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(30:23):
we wondered, But then we stopped caring about that and
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(30:45):
h i l e. S is available at flavorfiles dot com, here,
on the radio and wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
For this next segment, we thought it would be great
to talk about hot sauces. What are some of the
ones we like? What are some great ones that you
can find in the grocery store. So we're supposed to
be tasting through these hot sauces and talking about them.
But Dad, you just ate a two hundred and fifty
thousand Scoville unit Scotch bonnet and a bowl of ice cream.
(31:14):
How are you feeling over there?
Speaker 1 (31:16):
The ice cream has been quite helpful and it's finally
starting to settle down.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Like I like hot sauce, and as I said, I
have twenty seven bottles of hot sauce. But I always
use hot sauce in and pepper's in cooking. I don't
sit there and munch on them. That was I didn't
eat a Scotch bonnet. I took a bite of a
Scotch bonnet and that's all I ate. And it's just
that's the hottest thing I've ever had. But I'm recovering
and I will do the sauces. I'm in for the
(31:44):
whole thing now.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Well, I'm really glad, by the way, for anybody who's
eating a pepper or eating any of these sauces and
they find that it's a little too much. Milk and
ice cream do a really great job. It binds to
the capsasin and helps remove it from your palate where
water just spreads it around. So you had a good
call with the ice cream. Okay, thanks, So let's get
(32:06):
into a few of these hot sauces. One I asked
you to bring in, and I think this is a
great one for people who are not big on super spicy.
We spoke earlier about how to work with peppers if
you're not really big on spices, and so one of
the ones I like green chilula. It's made out of
holapano's and peblanos, and I think it has a really
(32:29):
great flavor. It does have a kick, but it has
less of a kick than it has a really wonderful
vegetable flavor, and I love it for that reason. I
love it in chili chiles at breakfast, I love it
in tacos, and I think the vegetable note is the
thing that I'm always going for because I don't get
the heat kick out of it.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Okay, what you're using a spoon, I'm supposed to just
drink this stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Well, I mean technically, if you use a spoon, you're
eating it. Okay, if you use a straw, you're drinking it.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
I thought I would put a little bit on the
end of my finger, but how many drops?
Speaker 3 (33:00):
So this stuff, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
How brave are you feeling after that Scotch bonnet?
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (33:03):
I mean, how bad can it be?
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Well that's what you said about the Scotch bonnet.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Well, that's got a very nice flavor to it.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
This on a taco would just be beautiful.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Absolutely. I love Salsaverda. Salsaverite is made out of tomatillos,
It's made out of herbs, it's made out of Houlapano's
really different than a red salsa, and so obviously it
has a kick to it. If you don't love kick,
it does have that. But I think it has such
a great flavor. If I'm hungover, the thing I want
more than anything as a breakfast burrito. I want some barbacoa,
(33:35):
I want some eggs, I want a little bacon in there,
and I want green chilula.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
It has a sweetness to it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Absolutely. That's one thing I love about jlapanos is they're
more vegtle than they are spicy. In fact, the jlapeno
is actually getting less spicy over time. It's so popular
that they grow them now and they don't get as spicy.
We can go into that another time, but they've literally
been bred to be less spicy so they can sell
more of them.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
You told me to go out and get some sirachia. Yeah,
and I did find siracha. This is the only sirachi
I could find. I had to go to a couple
of stores, but I found a siricha sauce made by Tabasco.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
That's very interesting, because so it's not a problem and
we should definitely try it. But when I think of
Sri racha, I think of a different product. So let's
try it really quick and then I'll tell you sort
of the story of Sri Racha because it's such a
fun story.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
Okay, So same thing. I'm just putting some of this
on a spoon.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
So this is Tabasco brand Sri Racha. Tabasco is from Louisiana,
right outside of New Orleans. They make a fermented hot
sauce lots of vinegar. It actually goes in barrels just
like whiskey or tequila wood, and so it has sort
of this very fermented flavor. This is definitely different than
Sri rocha that I'm normally used to. But it has
(34:52):
a good flavor. I like it, I would use it,
but I still don't think it's as good as what
I believe to be the true Sri Racha.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Okay, but I could on a spoon and eat it.
It was.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Or maybe it's just like my whole senses have been
dulled now from that Scotch bought it pepperine.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
It could be maybe you're just a little dead inside.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Maybe that's happened.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
Okay, So let's talk Sree Rocher really quick. So if
you're familiar with this guy, anybody who can see a
video version of this, So Sree Rocha, it's got the
rooster on the front, it's got the green cap. This is,
in my opinion, the true Sri Racha. So little bit
of background story. There's a town in Thailand. It's called
Sea Racha, and in nineteen thirty two, I think it was.
(35:36):
There's a woman who makes a hot sauce there in
this style. It's a little bit sweet, it's very garlic forward,
and then it has this clear garlic flavor. She makes.
This kind of becomes a local thing. Fast forward to
the eighties. There's a gentleman who moves to Los Angeles,
misses the chili sauce flavor he's familiar with. He's actually Vietnamese,
(35:58):
but he comes over and he says, I'm this chili sauce.
I'm gonna make one. He starts this company called Hoifong Foods.
His birth animal, like Chinese zodiac, is a rooster, so
he puts that on the bottle, classic green cap, and
he starts producing this like crazy. He trademarks Hoyfong Foods.
He trademarks the rooster. He doesn't trademark the word Sri Racha.
(36:22):
He then obviously spends his career popularizing this sauce, making
people love it, but not protecting the number one word
everybody identifies with it. He then, this poor guy ends
up having a chili shortage. So he's very particular. He
wants one type of pepper. He wants it made a
(36:43):
specific way. They have no social media, they have no
brand deals. They're very much we make the sauce. That's it, right,
So he has a shortage of peppers. So all these
people like Tabasco that we just capitalized are talked about,
go and capitalize on the shortage and say, yeah, we mix.
So what's funny is the original green Cap Rooster bottle
(37:04):
has now been lost store placements because they can't produce enough,
and all these other brands have bitten into the free
racha market.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
All right, So if you want to support actually, if
you wanted to support the original, you'd have to go
back to Thailand and find the lady.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Well, you'd have to go back to nineteen thirty two,
which is significantly more difficult.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Yes, okay, but.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I love it. It's not as hot. It has a
little bit of sweetness to it, a lot of garlic flavor.
This is probably my go to hot sauce. Kind of
just my ketch, all in my fridge all the time.
Put it on everything, even sushi.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Okay, you're in Texas with your restaurants, so it's Texas,
which is a lot more spice forward than many other locales,
that's for sure. But even then, you're not using something
like the Scotch bonnet thing I foolishly ate.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
We've definitely cooked with Scotch bonnets before. They're about as
hot as a hobb and aro pepper, and you know,
we'll cook with those, but in general, no, and these
things are just too hot, and we definitely don't serve
them straight up. We have done like a pickled holapeno before.
But one of the things that's good about that is
when you cook things, the scoville unit dies down some,
(38:11):
the heat dies down. Also, if we pickle it, we
can then remove it from that liquid and introducing it
to vinegar and then draining it basically washes some of
that spice away so you can get more of the flavor.
And that's a little bit how we're able to show
off the flavor of these peppers without the spice because
no straight Scotch bonnets. That is not a thing that
we can feed to people. It's irresponsible.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah, you're welcome, and I hope you're having a great time.
Where working off all of that spice.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Well, ice cream did it.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
So there are lots of hot sauces out there, right Tabasco.
We mentioned a little bit. Taylor, my business partner who
I do everything with at the restaurants, we met North Carolina.
So his favorite, because it's from North Carolina, is Texas Pete.
So it's so funny it's Texas Pete. It has a
cowboy on the front of the label like it's this
Texas hot sauce. But when you look on the back,
(39:02):
it says Winston Salem, North Carolina on West fourth Street. Okay,
so it's like, doesn't seem Texas at all, But this
is this does a lot of work at our restaurant.
Lots of times Texas peat will show up. But there
is one sort of quasi hot sauce I wanted to
recommend to everybody. It's called chili crisp or chili crunch.
You can find this in a lot of stores now,
(39:22):
it's really picking up popularity. What it is is it's
basically dried garlic, dried chilies, a little bit of oil.
So you can see here, if you're watching it, you
can see it doesn't look like a sauce. It looks
more like dried garlic and chilies, and it's crunchy. And
I love this condiment. I put on everything.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Now.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
You make an avocado toast, it's amazing. You kind of
put it in tacos, you put it on fajitas. It's
really wonderful. It's got a great crunch, good flavor, and
you should absolutely look for that in the grocery store.
It's one of my favorite condiments right now.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
All right, Well, that's it for us for this week.
That's certainly enough for me.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
In addition to here on the radio, you can find
us at flavorfiles dot com. That's p H I L e.
S flavorfiles dot com. Wherever you get your podcasts, it's
Apple or Spotify or iHeart any of those places. And
by the way, at flavorfiles dot com, you can leave
(40:23):
us a review. We're going to respond to reviews. When
our episode next week is all about reviews, we'll talk
to our restaurant reviewer see how Tanner reacts to those
kinds of responses to the restaurant world. That's next week
on flavor files
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