Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with capsaicin

What to do with a pepper surplus

borkencode — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:41:15 -0800

I've been given a bounty of peppers. Jalapenos, banana peppers, some other peppers I'm not sure of (I think they're poblanos). What should I do with this pile of spicy? My initial thought is to make a batch of my chili spiking sauce, which I use to make my chili deliciously spicy while the wife can have the standard fare. I'm not sure how best to preserve a large batch of it though, input regarding that would be appreciated as well.

it burns, it burns!

number9dream — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:11:08 -0800

I just went to the bathroom to pee, and seconds after finishing I realized that I must have unwittingly touched some hot peppers when I was in the kitchen. Please help me stop this unholy burning. I suppose it's relevant that I am male. I looked at a bunch of other threads on capsaicin-induced burning, but I'm not sure that I'm ready to douse my genitalia in a bleach solution, or with rubbing alcohol, or ammonia. Does anybody know how to fix this without resort to harsh chemicals?

Also... HOLY SHIT THIS HURTS MORE THAN ANYTHING I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED! PLEASE HELP ME SO I DON'T HAVE TO KILL MYSELF.

Sorry to yell at you all. Please help.

At what level of Scovilles does capsaicin produce skin irritation?

adipocere — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:48:31 -0800

At what level of Scovilles does capsaicin produce skin irritation? I know this would obviously vary based on the individual and various other circumstances.

I'm looking for the concentration (which seems to be usually measured in Scovilles, though I suppose it could be measured in other ways) of capsaicin which, if left without being washed off, not merely a burning sensation but also a mild redness and inflammation.

While I know from my own experience that people can become accustomed to the oral "heat," does skin typically exhibit a progressive sensitization, desensitization, or neither?

Feelin' hot, hot, hot...

monkey closet — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 12:49:40 -0800

What affects our perception of chilli heat? I thought it was all down to capsaicin, but my wife found today's curried chillies hotter than last night's meal, but with no discernible difference between green and red chillies, while I found the green surprisingly mild, and the red blew me away...

Is there a difference in the makeup of green & red chillies (same variety) which would account for our differing reactions? What about the drying process?

My eyes, the burning!

adamrice — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 17:45:41 -0800

Tricks for sanitizing hands after handling very spicy peppers? I'm not a pussy about spice. I can handle it. But we have some thermonuclear habaneros growing in the garden, and I chopped one today. I used some plastic wrap between it and my hand. The infernal oil penetrated or got around that. I kept my pinky elevated so at least one digit would be safe to, you know, scratch with. I washed my hands repeatedly.

I just carefully scratched near my eye with said pinky and it burns. Oh, my eyes, the burning!

Since the habanero plant is quite productive, this problem is going to repeat. I need a way to get the habanero fire-juice off me.

Why do orange chicken vapors make me cough?

lostburner — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 07:34:44 -0800

This question is about chinese fast-food orange chicken (the deep-fried amorphous nuggets with a thick tangy glaze). When I take a deep smell from a hot bowl of this chicken, or hold it in my mouth and breathe around it, some sort of irritating vapor makes me cough (or stings my nose). Just one cough – enough to keep it from getting into my lungs. Once the chicken cools down (to mouth temperature, even) it doesn't happen. It reminds me of the reaction I've had sniffing acid in lab – could it be lots of volatile vinegar? I've experienced this with fast-food chicken in more than one college food court.

My eyes taste like burning.

empath — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 07:48:24 -0800

Help, capsaicin on contacts. I had thought that several hours and a half dozen thorough handwashings after cooking, I'd be okay, but apparently not. I soaked them in milk for a bit this morning and that seemed to clear up one of them, and make the other one tolerable enough to wear for now, but there's still a mild burning sensation.

My question is will this eventually go away on its own or do I need to buy new contacts?

How do people eat hot peppers at almost every meal?

rxrfrx — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 05:22:41 -0800

How do people in certain regions (e.g. Sichuan, Korea, Thailand) eat super-spicy foods at almost every meal and not be in constant discomfort? I love eating foods that are high in flavor as well as spicy heat, like kimchi jigae (spicy kimchi stew), larb (minced meat with thai chiles), mirchi ka salan (South Indian curry based on lots of whole chiles), and the various Sichuan red-oil dishes.

However, I'm often in agony for some part of the day after. The actual burning on the way out isn't too bad, but it's the part leading up to that: the remains of the hot foods burning their way through my digestive tract, causing a painful aching in my large intestine.

As an American, I can eat these spicy foods once every few days, and alternate with something milder. However, in countries where this cuisine is ubiquitous and traditional, people seem to eat this stuff constantly. How do they do it? Do they just become immune to the internal effects of capsacain after eating it so much?

Also, what about kids? In the US, kids generally aren't offered super-spicy foods. At what age do kids start eating lots of chiles in these countries? And what about food-preparers? I've seen Indian housewives and cooks squatting on the ground, preparing massive quantities of chiles on a stone grinding apparatus, of course with their bare hands. This seems like the quantity of hot chile that won't even come off with soap and scrubbing. Are there a lot more incidents of accidental eye/genital contamination with hot peppers in these countries? Or are people just more careful, or immune to these effects?

One last question: is there anything I can do to mitigate the intestinal pain? Some food or drug I can eat along with the spicy food?

Capsaicin

Eamon — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 07:55:47 -0800

Physiologyfilter: After reading about capsaicin in this Straight Dope article by following a link from this thread, I got to thinking...

The compound has a powerful irritant effect on certain mammalian pain receptors (nociceptors). The key receptor molecule, a protein on the outer surface of the cell, was identified in 1997. When capsaicin comes into contact with it, a cascade of intracellular reactions is triggered that is perceived by the brain as pain.

People feel pain when capsaicin comes in contact with certain cells. Pain, of course, is usually the body's way of telling us that it's damaged. In the case of capsaicin, however, it's just a biophysical fluke (this molecule just happens to fit in that receptor): no harm is being done to the body, it just feels like it.

Are there other ways the body can be tricked into feeling pain when no damage is being done? Is there any danger in fooling the brain in this manner? What are the adverse affects of going through frequent or dramatic pain/endorphin cycles?