Topic of the Week: How spicy is spicy enough?

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It’s been a while and while I have a couple of ideas for actually boardgame related threads… I have noticed that it is quite difficult to communicate to others how spicy I like my food.

  • So explain to us how spicy you like your food.
  • what was the spiciest food you ever tried?
  • Are there different types of spice you like? (pepper, chili, mustard, meerrettich / wasabi, … )
  • What is your favorite spicy dish?
  • Favorite spicy condiment?
  • Which cuisine has the best spicy spices in your opinion?
  • How do you communicate your spice preference to cuisine natives?

Bonus Question: Would you survive a Hot Ones interview?
(interview channel on you tube where interviewees eat vegan or meaty wings with increasingly spicy hot sauces while being asked about all kinds of things)

:fire: :fire: :fire:

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I don’t care all that much for spicy food. A little tingle on the tongue is fine, but nothing that is going to make my eyes water or set my mouth on fire. Something like wasabi is okay since it hits hard but then fades away pretty quickly. I enjoy a lot of snacks that are “Sweet Spicy Chili” like Doritos and Wheat Thins, but they aren’t really all that spicy.

Spiciest thing I remember eating was some buffalo wings at a restaurant called Coco’s when I was a kid. I had eaten buffalo wings at Black Angus before and really liked them, so when my dad and I went to a Coco’s to eat one time, I saw it on the menu and decided to get that. Got a plate of wings with sauce so spicy you couldn’t even breathe over the plate. I had maybe two bites before I had to stop eating. My dad got upset at first, then I slid the plate over to him and he got a whiff of it and understood. No idea what the heck they put in that sauce, but it was pretty brutal at the time.

I love me some sweet chili sauce. I like it on tacos!

Probably Chinese food for best spices. General Tso’s chicken has long been a favorite, and it’s got a good level of spice for me.

Bonus Answer: No. No I would not.

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I am built for 1/10 spice and I do not understand why it is suddenly in everything.

I had Ethiopian injera with casually spicy vegetables a few years ago that made me feel like I’d swallowed a golf ball of nausea and pain. Not a fun experience.

Spiciest thing ever was some Mee Goreng from a local takeaway that blew the front of my face off, four large sporty men couldn’t finish it. I honestly thought my lips were going to catch fire and fall off. The chef put a tiny bit of red paste from a toothpaste tube into a big wok, and that was enough.

Bonus Question: not even 10 seconds, no.

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Trying to explain it, a tough challenge! I like chili, but I rarely want it to be the dominant “experience” of what I am eating - I want to taste the food rather than just have my mouth feel like it is on fire. So probably medium to medium-hot. But scales differ, something with 3 chilis out of 3 and “hot” on the label in the supermarket is probably going to be fine. Something with 3 chilis out of 5 on a Thai restaurant menu may well be at the upper limit of my tolerance and probably beyond the limit of my enjoyment.

The spiciest food I’ve ever tried was probably a year or two after I started work and was in the process of gradually ordering hotter and hotter Indian curries to find out where my limit was. Sadly I don’t recall exactly what it was, but it was at The Bombay in Oxford and I think remains the only food I’ve ordered for myself and not finished because it was too spicy - I did manage to get through most of it though!

I think my favourite spicy food would be an Indian (or extended Indian subcontinent) curry of some variety and a naan (also of some variety), although some sort of Thai curry would run it close. I also really enjoy making my own curries, which usually start by adding shop-bought garam masala and turmeric then opening each pot of spices I have in the cupboard and sniffing it to see if I’m in the mood to add it today. If it’s the right time of year I’ll also add homegrown chili peppers to it, which is always a gamble: most are mild but occasionally one is incredibly hot, seemingly without rhyme or reason.

For condiments, if we’re talking spicy = hot then sweet chili sauce is the one I use by far the most. If spicy = strong, then my impression is that my wife and both I enjoy black pepper more, maybe quite a bit more, than the average person.

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Me too, but I think for the opposite reason. Almost any spicy is too spicy; I just can’t be doing with it. What most people might call mildly hot is uneatable for me.

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Because salt, the previous standard way to cover up low quality ingredients, is now Officially Bad.

My wife has a bad abreaction to chilli, which means that something with enough chilli that she can’t eat it at all may well be in the “still quite bland” bracket for me.

I enjoy most of the spicy flavours but I’m interested in the flavour rather than the heat. And in the flavour of the underlying food too.

I get hot sauces when they look interesting, quite enjoy sriracha and various peri peris, but the one I always have available is Lingham’s chilli, garlic and ginger.

When I was living in Upton Park (East London, lots of Indian and Caribbean cooking by people whose grandparents or parents were born there) the standard spice level was what I’d call moderate. Travelling to Cambridge for RPG sessions and getting takeaways, it was about two levels higher.

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I’ve eaten and enjoyed a dish called Garlic Chilli Prawns. It was whole garlic, chilli and prawns.

Regular spice level is medium though. I like a tingle but not a need a yoghurt.

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I like spicy (chili) food, but I don’t like pain. I like a pleasant but not overpowering post-meal burn.
I don’t like vinegar so I do not do Tabasco or Buffalo sauce.
I usually don’t go for mustard but a spicy mustard isn’t bad in the right dish.
I only use wasabi occasionally and only on sub-standard sushi.
I like black pepper but haven’t had a dish that was too peppery to know what my limits are.

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For the average German I am on the very spicy end of the spectrum.
World wide… probably just average considering how many people live in countries with cuisines that have very spicy dishes.

While in Thailand I ordered “tourist spicy” or in Chiang Mai “2 thai chilis for my som tum please”.
In German restaurants for Thai or Indian cuisine I usually order “spicy” because I assume they’ve already factored in my European tastebuds.

I have several contenders for spiciest food ever or at least very memorable and very spicy food:

  • 1999: roommates’ and my first attempt to cook from my new Indonesian recipe book… we had no idea it was possible to remove the kernels from a chili before cooking to control spice levels.
  • 2008: A South Indian curry during a trip to Tamil Nadu/Kerala. Cooked for tourists but nevertheless. Also: whole salt-roasted chilis to put on a salad to make it “pop” a little. (I wish I could get those here never seen the like anywhere)
  • 2009: Thai restaurant we visited during our honeymoon somewhere near Paihia, North Island NZ.
  • 2014: That Som Tum in Chiang Mai. Also various curries tried during the trip (though most memorable were actually both sushi and ramen in one of the big malls of Bangkok)
  • 2018: my partner visited Arizona for work and had a colleague recomend hot sauces. He came back with a bottle of green stuff that most people I gave the smallest amount to immediately decided to hate–I thought it was very tasty (but also extremely spicy but that’s the art being tasty while being very very spicy)
  • 2022: South Indian restaurant in Budapest: we ordered “euro spicy” as back home forgetting the “Hungarians eat more spicy than the rest of Europe” modifier.
  • 2024: The crispy chili oil my partner made at home with chilis too spicy for crispy chili oil … that may actually be the winner. It was almost inedible.
  • 2025: some Korean hot sauce with flames on the packaging spread liberally on top of my hummus sandwich because I thought Korean spice ended with variants of Gochujang

Except maybe possible the 2024 crispy chili oil iteration, I regretted none of these. We recently threw out the rest of the batch.

I like all the spicy foods. Pepper, mustard, wasabi. But most of all chili spice. There are few pepper types like long pepper and Szechuan that feel a little off to my nose in certain combinations. But black pepper I generally like on everything.

Favorite spicy condiment: I have had some really good hot sauces. But for every day use Sriracha or Gochujang. Depending on specific context. Harissa is also a very good contender we always have some at home. Normally I have at least these 3 and between 1-3 hot sauces in the fridge.

The best spicy cuisines are in this order:

  • Thai
  • (South) Indian
  • Korea
  • Everything I can put hot sauce on.

By putting my traveling container of hot sauce on the table :wink: No just kidding. I find it immensely difficult and during traveling usually refrain from ordering anything but “a little bit spicy”

Bonus Question: I think I would make it to the end of Hot Ones. I’ve tried one of the final sauces (my BiL had one at some point) and it was very tasty despite the high spice levels and I have ordered some of the sauces from their line up from a specialty shop in the past and those were really really good. The problem is there is one sauce on position 6 or 7 which is called “Da Bomb” which is less spicy than the ones after but apparently has so little taste to mask the spice that people who taste it really suffer. They change around the other sauces but Da Bomb always stays in position to irritate the guests.

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That describes my wife.

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She has very good taste :wink:

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By spicy I really mean chili.

Black pepper’s ok, as is mustard. I assume all you chili lovers out there must react to chili as I do to those - too much is interesting, may even spoil the flavour, but it isn’t actively unpleasant, or downright painful, which is how I find anything more than the tiniest amount of chili.

The tiniest amount can be quite nice though.

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I used to be a typical British teenager, asking for the hottest curry on the menu mostly just to prove I could eat it.

These days, while I had no problem* eating full strength curries in rural India, I don’t really enjoy extreme heat, at either end of the digestive system. Local curries are almost always available graded, from mild to extreme heat, and I’ll usually opt for something in the middle. Of course, that’s not how curries should be made, so I kind of resent this flexibility, but it allows everyone to pick their favourites at a heat level they can tolerate so eh, whatever.

I wouldn’t put heat and spiciness on the same scale though? I like things spicy.

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Maybe a fine distinction that escapes my non-native English. Or rather that I am aware of but forget?

In German there is the distinction as well

  • scharf (literal: sharp) = hot flavors
  • würzig = spicy but with the distinction of being intense but most likely not hot. Where spicy can include hotness as far as I am aware?

:slight_smile:

I must admit for all my love for hot sauce et al… I can’t always stomach it. Or rather my stomach resents it sometimes.

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My experience of German fast food and restaurants is certainly that it defaults to less spicy than modern British; I suspect the influence of a lot of post-WWII immigration here. (Though there are still places in the UK where flavour appears to be regarded as a self-indulgent sin.)

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I enjoy a modest level of spiciness in a meal, but if it ventures into full nudity I find that rather distracting.

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I used to like things a lot hotter/spicier than I do these days. When we redid our kitchen, found several bottles of hot sauce that peope had bought me over the years and I couldn’t take several of them!!

That said, sirarcha tends to go on everything as I do still like a bit of a kick on most things

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And I probably could have done the Hot Ones interview when I was younger. Not so sure now!! Certainly wouldn’t enjoy the indigestion it would give me for days anyway

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I love spicy food. I have almost never approached a dish and said “Nope, that’s too spicy.”

That stated, I tend to avoid “Suicide-level” spicy these days (On a scale of 1 - 10, the scale might be: Nothing, Very Sweet, Sweet, Mild, Medium, Medium Hot, Hot, Spicy, Very Spicy, Suicidal). I usually like something in the 7 to 8 level on that scale… a good dose of Sriracha on everything when I remember (burgers, pasta, rice, soups), chili that has a hefty kick (3 or 4 jalapenos, 1 or 2 more powerful peppers), or a good dose of red chili flakes in pasta sauces and pizza. Oh, and tabasco or hot sauce for dipping pizza crusts in.

My partner used to be with me, but is now firmly in the 4-5 level (medium to slightly-less-than-medium). As a result I tend to under-spice when I cook and then compensate with hot sauces afterwards.

Now, all that stated, “Hot for the sake of hot” is another way of saying “Bad for the sake of pain.” A good hot sauce should have a pleasing warmth that fills the mouth and clears the sinuses, but it has to taste good, and it’s surprising how often hot sauces are like “forget flavour! All pain!” which defeats the point of enjoying food. I’ve had a few Suicide-level spicy dishes, and when they’re good I love them (this one place near McMaster University had these spectacular Suicide Chicken Wings that, if you could eat 20 of them they were free… they politely asked me to stop ordering them because damn they were good), but generally they’re just pain. And that’s no bueno.

And these days I’m not as cautious about touching my face when I eat spicy food. So that means I have to be a bit more careful too.

Oh, and there’s something about raw-spicy food that I struggle with sometimes. Like, I will put 2 thai chilis in my pho without hesitation, but if I nibble one while raw I almost always regret it.

I love wasabi (North American wasabi is actually horseradish with flavouring, but I love it… Japanese wasabi is a lot more subtle, but I love it too), I love gochujong, I love lamb vindaloo… my favourite Doritos are the “roulette” ones where 1 out of 20 chips is “really” spicy, and I wish I could just get bags of the “really” spicy chips without the plain ones.

I don’t know if the Hot Ones would give me issue. I suspect that I’d Alton Brown the things and be like “Yeah, that’s spicy, but it’s all vinegar, and that doesn’t taste good…”

Oh, there is a spicy fish that’s a very traditional Chinese dish that I don’t mind but I’m not crazy about. Uses these red peppercorns that cause numbing instead of heat. The fish is great, but the broth isn’t designed to be eaten because of the numbing. It’s fine, but give me a good spicy thai chicken laksa soup any day of the week.

As for which cuisine has the best spicy spices… Caribbean I find the most consistently powerful with good flavour, and they’re often variations on Indian spices.

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I did a South Indian cookery course and I admit that a lot of that was approaching my tolerance level!! A LOT more chillis than I’ve seen in other areas of Indian cooking

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