Spice up your life
If you know me & better yet (hehe) have consumed a meal made by me, you’ll know that I loveeeee my chilli and spicy foods.
I get it, it’s definitely not for everyone and can overwhelm the flavours of a meal if you’re not acquainted with this fierce, fiery food.
However, I honestly believe this exciting element has the ability to elevate a meal and add an interesting flavour dynamic to other ingredients.
So, I wanted to provide a few tips, tricks and easy steps to follow, so anyone can learn to soak up and build a better tolerance to savour the spice!
Smart small and build your tolerance
As you might expect, you can’t expect to just throw in a whole chilli off the bat and be absolutely fine with it. What you can do though, is begin to eat more foods that contain capsaicin. What is this might you ask? Well this is the compound responsible for the sensations of heat in our mouths.
Basically, it works on a chemical level by causing the receptors in the tongue and mouth to transmit a ‘hot’ signal to the brain. Overtime you can develop a resistance through repeat exposure, stopping pain signals from being transmitted.
The more spicy foods you eat, the more resistant to its effects you will become. Start small, adding a little hot sauce like Sriracha, or a few pieces of de-seeded and minced chilli and slowly build a tolerance!
Eat slowly during meals that are spicy
I should really take my own advice because well, I suck at eating slowly, but luckily it’s not because of anything related to spice. However, there are a number of beneficial reasons for actively doing so when eating!
This is because you won’t overwhelm your mouth or taste buds. Every time you take another bite, you’re adding more hot ingredients to your mouth. If you do this quickly, the receptors will react accordingly and have less time in between bites for the effects to wear off.
So, eating more slowly, taking bites of other elements of your meal that are not spicy, like a side salad or piece of bread in between will give your mouth some time to cool down. Savouring the compounds and flavours of your meal can go a long way when trying to build a tolerance!
Explore ingredients that add spice in interesting ways
Acquainting yourself with spicy ingredients doesn’t necessarily mean piling in the chilli flakes, adding mounds of hot sauce or eating a whole chilli, there are so many other herbs and spices whose flavour profiles include an element of spice and can be used to acquire a taste.
Think of herbs and spices as your gateway to the bolder flavours. Use spices like Cajun, Chinese Five Spice, Smoked Paprika… even a generous crack of Black Pepper and you’ll be eating chillies before you know it!
Ultimately it is about focusing on tastes and aromas that make you want to keep eating. Practice restraint. Add one spice at a time to try and figure out its flavours and how you respond before throwing in every single hot ingredients and thinking AGHHH never again.
Enough from me! For now…
Enjoy these tips, happy eating and well, enjoy the heat!