Larry, HEEELLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!

[Jenise]

Five alarm fire here. I bought a dozen Hatch mediums--supposedly--but the little f---ers are seriously hot. I was going to put them all in my big pot of chile verde, so after roasting them I rinsed and cleaned them at my prep station and got thru maybe half of them because while bent over picking out the veins I got so much fumes I started sneezing and then I started coughing so bad I ran out of oxygen so I ran upstairs to get my inhaler and on the way I tripped over a cat so I bent over to pet it and tell him everything would be okay and then got into the shower to wash all this off but while there I touched my bum and I'm now dying and the cat's running around in circles howling because when he sat down to take his own bath guess what.

I thought I heard my laptop screaming.

It's an occupational hazard when handling chiles as you've discovered. Prime directive of chile: don't touch certain parts of your body after peeling. If I roast and peel a 30-lb bag of chiles, it takes me about two hours, and my hands are on fire afterwards. I don't use gloves, but I figure it's good for my arthritis. I like the medium Big Jim chiles, but every so often it's possible to get a really hot batch.

Luckily capsaicin won't damage you, it only feels like it's burning you. And it does wear off. Remember, though, that capsaicin is fat soluble, so water doesn't do anything. Whole milk, ice cream, etc. does work, though.

Anecdote: While living in Minneapolis, I gave my neighbor some chiles, but later on he touched his contact lenses. You know the rest.

Factoid: Birds don't have capsaicin receptors so they can eat the seeds w/o any problem.

Luckily capsaicin won't damage you, it only feels like it's burning you. And it does wear off. Remember, though, that capsaicin is fat soluble, so water doesn't do anything. Whole milk, ice cream, etc. does work, though.

Jenise, d'ya want me to ring up the boys and we'll come over and butter you up?

(Yer not one a them margarine girls, are ye?)

[Jenise]

Big Jims are my favorite, too. I have no idea what these were--just what Haggen market had and they were supposedly Mediums. I am betting the produce guy--who likely doesn't eat chiles--mixed them up, or simply mixed the hots which don't sell as well into the mediums when stock got lower on both to make a neater display. But truth--I've been working with these for years and never ever before have I experienced fumes like that. Holy moly.

[Jenise]

Speaking of pepper, in recent years I've noticed an increased sensitivity. I still like hot food, but not only do powdered peppers, even regular old black, make me sneeze (just like the Road Runner cartoons!) but in recent years I've noticed that eating seasoned-hot food can make me sneeze and now merely handling hot chiles did it too.

Larry, you know so much about that realm--what's going on here? Do you think this 'sensitivity' is actually an allergy?

[Jenise]

And Jeff--Mazola's fine.

Speaking of pepper, in recent years I've noticed an increased sensitivity. I still like hot food, but not only do powdered peppers, even regular old black, make me sneeze (just like the Road Runner cartoons!) but in recent years I've noticed that eating seasoned-hot food can make me sneeze and now merely handling hot chiles did it too.

Larry, you know so much about that realm--what's going on here? Do you think this 'sensitivity' is actually an allergy?

I doubt you have a pepper allergy (no hives, rash, itchy skin, swollen lips, etc.). More likely, the sneezing is just caused by irritating the olfactory nerve with pepper particles and your nose is trying to rid itself of the irritant. I've also found lately that I sometimes sneeze when sprinkling cayenne on something.

Speaking of irritants: several months I walked outside with a rye cracker topped with peanut butter and cayenne powder. A gust of wind blew the cayenne into my eyes. That really did get my attention.

Remember, though, that capsaicin is fat soluble, so water doesn't do anything. Whole milk, ice cream, etc. does work, though.

So if cooking with these peppers, all you need to do is have a handy Fudgesicle in the freezer to shove up your...er to apply to the affected area if you have a reaction?

Jenise, possibly those were serranos rather than Hatch chiles?

Our local Indian grocery had fresh ghost chiles one time. I bought 20 of them, gave half to a fire-breathing friend (he plays around with Carolina Reapers ), and used the other 10, plus 10 habaneros, to make a special batch of Inner Beauty hot sauce that I nicknamed Inner Beauty Ghost Sauce. I was extremely careful when handling the chiles, but my hands were burning for hours afterward. But I was almost overcome by the fumes from the blender.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Jenise, possibly those were serranos rather than Hatch chiles?

Our local Indian grocery had fresh ghost chiles one time. I bought 20 of them, gave half to a fire-breathing friend (he plays around with Carolina Reapers ), and used the other 10, plus 10 habaneros, to make a special batch of Inner Beauty hot sauce that I nicknamed Inner Beauty Ghost Sauce. I was extremely careful when handling the chiles, but my hands were burning for hours afterward. But I was almost overcome by the fumes from the blender.

-Paul W.

If that was a serious question--no, not physically similar at all. That must have been one helluva experience. Not surprising at the fumes out of a blender, that's so concentrated! But I've never encountered fumes from a single green chile before (I handled one at the sink while the others were six feet away).

If you like cars or Top Gear, take a look at this - you want to go to the 5:00 min mark where Richard Hammond has a moment with a naga pepper (I noticed this as I own a Z4M and it was nice to see a culinary component to the review).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FTcr2IFeg0

I think that the naga was top pepper on the Scoville scale for awhile, but is now superseded by a few others.

Hatch are maybe 6-8000 HSU while nagas are 1 - 1.3 million HSU. Apparently the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion is hotter than police pepper spray!

See https://chasingchilli.com.au/scoville-scale/

On a tour of a friend's garden I once picked a habanero fresh off the plant and ate it. My friend said he'd never seen anyone's face turn so red. It was an informative lesson in how the human digestive tract is structured. I knew exactly where that habanero was at every moment.

-Paul W.

Jenise, possibly those were serranos rather than Hatch chiles?


-Paul W.

No such thing as a Hatch chile. It only refers to the Hatch Valley where a number of varieties of chiles are grown. I'm not sure what variety Jenise purchased, but serranos really don't look like Big Jim chiles (Jenise's and my favorite).

[Jenise]

I have no idea what species of chile mine were, and the fool at the store wouldn't know. Nobody will have ever asked. I did get Big Jims up here once in the past, thank you Whole Foods Market. And the ones we have now from last year were something like Arizona65831. I suspect they weren't even grown in NM--but they were good, large and meaty.