DANGER!
HIGH SPICE-AGE!
Inside the deceptively dangerous chili pepper BY SHANNON FINNELL
N
o food is quite as synonymous with “hot” as chili
peppers. Whether adding a slight kick to a bland
dish or providing the core of the spicy food
lover’s diet, chili peppers can bring a range of
flavors to a dish — and the spiciness factor is actually a matter of
anatomy.
Capsaicin, the chemical that makes chili peppers hot, is distributed
unevenly throughout the fruit. Nellie Oehler, who oversees master food
preparers for OSU’s Lane County Extension, says that most people ditch
the most spicy, capsaicin-ated parts of the pepper.
“People usually cut them open and take out the seeds and the
veins, but I know people that like the seeds because there’s more
heat in the seeds,” Oehler says. “It depends on what you like.”
Even those who like it hot need to be careful with the
genus Capsicum, though, because capsaicin is present at
some level throughout the fruit, even on the outside of the
skin. Oehler recommends using a plastic produce bag to pick
them up at the grocery store, because the capsaicin residue
can rub off on skin. “You pick them up out of the bins at the
store, and then you wipe your kid’s eye — that can be really
dangerous,” she says.
Oehler sees a lot of people overestimating their capacity to
cope with chili pepper fumes and suffering the consequences.
“People are macho: ‘I can do this, and I don’t need gloves, and
I don’t need a mask or whatever,’ and they end up in the
emergency room.”
The emergency room?
“Oh yeah,” she says. “We get two or three calls every
summer that somebody burned themselves with peppers,
especially those little habaneros and those really hot Chinese
cherries, those can really cause burns.”
Chili peppers can be rated on a scale of zero to almost 1.5
million Scoville heat units (SHU), which measures capsaicin. Bell
peppers rate a wimpy zero; the latest world record holder — and it’s upped all the time
— is the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T pepper at 1,463,700 SHU.
The danger of chili peppers doesn’t end with capsaicin. Preserving hot peppers by pickling
them is a popular way to save summer spice through the winter, but peppers are a low-acid
food, which makes them more vulnerable to botulism. They can still be handled safely, though.
“Don’t can them without vinegar if you’re making a pickled pepper,” Oehler advises, “or
if you use a pressure canner, follow the directions for a low-acid food like green beans.”
Drying peppers for the winter is safer, and one of the easiest ways to use peppers
because no pre-drying treatment is required. Oehler says that just stringing them across the
garage is a perfectly decent drying method.
“They freeze pretty well depending on what you want to do with them, but they’re not
going to stay crisp as if they were fresh,” Oehler says. That diminishes what peppers can do
for the texture of salads, but as flavoring they’re untainted. Before storing this way, blanching
peppers slows enzyme activity to keep them closer to their fresh flavor and texture.
Oehler recommends freezing and drying to penny-pinchers who want to avoid sky-high
pepper prices in the winter. To save even more money, she says she’s had a pretty easy time
growing them in the Willamette Valley climate, even in flower pots. ■
For more information on how to cook with chili peppers, check out OSU Extension’s information at http://wkly.ws/f
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CHOW! Winter 2012 9