“THIS is THE Hottest!!!”
Chile peppers have fit stupid social media dynamics and silly SEO (“search engine optimization”) for marketing and influencer-dom far too well.
Nuance, sense, and sensibility, after all, are difficult to market and hard to present with simple keywords.
Extremes and in-your-face action, on the other hand: Those are great for driving engagement, getting attention, being found easily.
Challenges
No wonder, then, that One Chip Challenges were going on until they may have been involved in deaths, hot pepper eating contests seem essential for any chile pepper show, pepper breeders crank out new “world record hottest chile peppers” and the hottest dishes, snacks, whatevers keep coming out.
It’s easy, and the engagement it drives, the apparent fun of watching people suffer, keeps it going.
“Hot Ones,” in their combination with interviews, at least uses this for some good effect, but it all drives the bad view that chile peppers are all about suffering further and further – and wrongly so.
It’s Their Fault
Of course, from a plant-focused perspective, you could say that it’s the chile pepper’s own doing.
They developed pungency, humans are just running with it, with their (our) penchant for pain and suffering as fun.
It’s similar to how tobacco will be smoked, alcohol will be drunk.
Here, too, however, we see the problem of enjoyment versus ill effects.
Drinking for the Burn? Eating for the Pain?
We are well aware of the negative effects that drinking (to excess) will have, same as we are well aware that eating things that are overly spicy will not be all that much fun anymore.
Trouble as there may be with alcohol (addiction, underage drinking, drunk driving,…), we do not constantly point out these negative sides, let alone celebrate the negatives and make it a challenge to create more potent alcoholic drinks and see who can handle the worst of them. (Or at least, we don’t do so publicly.)
Sure, it speaks to chile peppers being less of a problem. Even if spicy food cravings are often described as addictions and a variant of masochism, they aren’t a drug like alcohol.
Still, if food writing about alcoholic drinks were like writing about spicy dishes, it would be focused on the alcohol content, the burn, the intestinal trouble, and not the aromas and the best pairings.
This is what has been missing.
Pepper Bliss
It may be hard, if not impossible, to get more of that into social media, but at least food writing that deems itself good and helpful should do more than talk of pungency alone when it comes to chile peppers, hot sauces, and spicy dishes.
We definitely could do better.
We can describe pungency itself better.
Beyond that, we can focus on the full range of aromas, the complexity of the flavors including – but not drowned out, if well done – the heat!
Just as there are good wine pairings with dishes, good combinations of flavors to make for a great cocktail, so there are great combinations of heat, flavors, aromas, spices, and main ingredients in dishes.
Let’s describe them and support our knowledge of them!
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