Jesse’s Bout with Habaneros
This week while I was in Texas, Jesse decided to make some dinner.
The plan was for a sausage and pasta medly. He threw some water on the oven, defrosted some sausage, and started cutting up some peppers and onions to put into the mix.
He grabbed a yellow and red pepper, as well as some home grown peppers that Thomas had brought from his folk’s place. In retrospect, we realize that one of these may have been the infamous habanero pepper. The habanero is known for its ability to kill or knock out anyone under 9 years of age who lives north of the Mason Dixon line.
Jesse cut those peppers and added them to the sauce and sausage that was now simmering on the range. It wasn’t long before the scent of fire touched his unexpecting face. He didn’t describe it as being overly noxious, but he recognized the burn and knew to dilute his dinner with additional sauce.
The dinner was cooked, and the dinner was ate, and the dinner was delicious.
After dinner, Jesse washed his hands. But it wasn’t long before a rogue finger found its way to Jesse’s face. He rubbed his eye. And Pain exploded.
Think Hindenburg, except instead of a zepplin, Jesse’s face.
First his face turned red. Then it started to swell. He ran to the bathroom and soaked his face in water… to no avail. He had to wait it out.
and wait he did. Finally around 11:00pm, his face had calmed down to comfortable levels and he was ready for bed. But before bed, he had to use the bathroom.
One would think that after washing his hands so many times his hands would be free from the hot pepper’s oils of pain. One would think that after so many hours surely the burning agent would be gone.
Sadly no. After using the bathroom, Jesse experienced 3 or so more hours of very personal pain.
As Benjamin can testify, yogurt is one of the few things around the house that does a good job in calming the capsaicin “burn” that comes from touching peppers to the face.
It kinda makes sense as milk is the beverage of choice in order to calm a burning mouth and throat after eating crazy peppers.
You might throw water on the oven, but it probably wouldn’t do much. I would put it on the stove instead.
if we want to get picky, he really should have put the water in a pot instead of just throwing it on the oven or the stove. Instead of cooking, all he really did was make a mess.
Hahaha, oh man. Capsaicin is not soluble in water, hence the reason for milk/yoghurt being better for stopping the burning.
Snotty comments aside, my coworker tells this story of a friend who has an ongoing hot sauce/spicy food battle with his brother. Apparently for christmas one year, said friend received a hot sauce from his brother, that was mostly or entirely capsaicin and little else. Said friend dipped the tip of a toothpick into the sauce, and put the tiniest drop onto the tip of his tongue. Apparently, profuse sweating and convulsions followed for the rest of the night, and when they finally subsided, he had this white lesion on the tip of his tongue for the following few weeks.
and this is why capsaicin is a controlled substance.
1. Those hotsauces are super expensive and super rare, but some contain well over 1000 times more capsaicin than Tobasco sauce.
http://www.chez-williams.com/Hot%20Sauce/hothome.htm
2. “Think Hindenburg, except instead of a zepplin, Jesse’s face.”
HAHAHAHAHAHA, there are so many fat jokes in this sentence I’m going to need a new pair of pants.
i have experience a similar situation a good few years ago now it involved Chilli Flowers, I being young and un-wise decided to take the seeds and plant them in garden, so I did and then didn’t was my hands, instead I touched my entire face. My whole faced burned for hours, I remember it hurting oh so much and having to have ice packs on my face.
Needless to say, I don’t eat Chillis anymore!
Early on in my cooking career I made a similar mistake that led to me having to thow out a pair of contacts. Now if I am cooking with hot peppers I always take out my contacts before chopping so I won’t contanminate them when I have to take them out later that night.
Uuuuuughh!!! That makes me cringe just thinking about it! Contacts freak me out enough as it is….without the hot pepper sauce on them!
I had a similar issue with some extremely potent jalapeno’s last winter. Usually they are relatively mild, but I think these used some sort of performance enhancers in their youth.
Another thing to keep away from contacts, and eyes: hydrogen peroxide. Some contact solutions contain hydrogen peroxide, and require a special case that contains a neutralizing piece (you have to leave the contacts in the special case 4 hours to fully neutralize the peroxide). Now, using this special hydrogen peroxide based solution in a regular contact case does not allow for neutralization…..
The result, when contacts that have been so poorly managed are put into one’s eyes, is horrific. Have you ever put hydrogen peroxide on a dirty wound to kill bacteria and avoid infection? It sort of foams white….there’s a lot of natural bacteria in the eye….so of course, it foams too. I would definitely avoid this painful, burning adventure.
Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything…..but you’re likely to be rewarded with the following if you do manage to pull this off: a trip to the ER, gel antibiotics for your eye, numbing drops for the pain, and several days of wearing sunglasses to class because the whiteboard is just too bright to look at!
I happened to notice that on the front page of Wikipedia this evening, the featured picture of the day is the habanero chile.