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Post by daylilydude on Jul 24, 2011 23:37:44 GMT -5
What causes the heat, seeds or the membrane? And what do you use to curb the lava flow when eating peppers?
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Post by spacecase0 on Jul 25, 2011 15:26:23 GMT -5
I dry and make dust out of them and then use small amounts of the pepper powder, if I take out the seeds first it is way less hot, so I know that most of the heat is in the seeds, but as to what part of the seed I am not sure
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Post by pepperhead212 on Jul 25, 2011 16:49:14 GMT -5
What causes the heat, seeds or the membrane? And what do you use to curb the lava flow when eating peppers? Why would I want to curb the lava flow? LOL The heat is in the membranes, and not in the seeds, though some is stuck to the seeds, which is what gave rise to this myth. And in very hot peppers you can see the droplets of oil on the membranes. A friend and I used to cut open red savinas for suckers at parties (you know the type, the ones that had to eat the hottest thing we had. Too bad the bhut jolokias were only in India then!), and look closely, to see how hot the pepper would be; if there were large droplets, we would use it for popping, if small or unnoticeable, we would set it aside for cooking with. Now there are several varieties of chinense that have almost no heat, and great flavor, but back then we had to remove the veins carefully, to get the heat out, and only some of it at that! You have to take a very small paring knife - I use a bird's beak type - and cut the vein out at its base, taking care not to smear those oil droplets around in the pepper. Then rinse the pepper out - you loose some flavor this way, but even with a very hot hab, you can get a good amount of the heat out of it doing this. I have some things I make with habaneros that depend on that unique flavor, and I have made some this way, for people that can't take the heat. Otherwise, I don't even seed them when a recipe calls for it! Another thing I have noticed, though I have never seen a reference to it in any literature, is that the heat of habaneros seems to be neutralized by acid. I have made things with vinegar or lime juice in them, that were almost too hot to eat the first day, but the next day it was much less hot, and by the third day or so, the heat is almost gone. Yet regular peppers get hotter upon sitting, as a rule. Maybe their capsaicin has a slightly different chemical make-up.
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grunt
Junior Member
Posts: 72
Joined: June 2011
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Post by grunt on Jul 25, 2011 18:30:43 GMT -5
If you want to up the ante on heat, stress the hell out of your plants = The only pepper I have ever had that made me back off, came from a small plant that battled spider mites its whole life. I've had backyard peppers in Portugal that made me feel like I could slice donuts off my lips, but they didn't come close to that spoder mite baby.
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