The Terrible Tale of Mr. Chris and the Ghost Peppers!

Wednesday my friend Dave at work gave me a bottle of Dave's Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce. I tried it that evening adding it a recipe I was making, and I used about a teaspoon. Note this was at the start of the cooking process and it was a single serving recipe.

It gave the food quite a nice kick and taste, and while indeed spicy, it was, as I have used this line in the past, nothing to write home about. It was a good flavor but not a huge amount of heat.

Well, last night I must have had a brain fart because I made myself a frozen dinner (one of those new all natural varieties) and after it was done I took a taste. It was decent, and obviously of better quality than your usual frozen dinner but for something labeled as Spicy Southwestern Style Chicken, it was about as spicy as Whoopi Goldberg in a cocktail waitress' dress. It needed some spice!

What to do, what to do, what to do? I thought! And then I spied the bottle of Ghost Pepper sauce......So, I added a couple of teaspoons and a dash for good measure of Ghost Pepper sauce and mixed it in.. Note that this was after cooking had finished in case you were still busy visualizing Miss Goldberg and forgot about that fact. In the back of my mind I was thinking the previous exposure to the sauce that it was just not as spicy as advertised, but, being in the midst of a senior moment I forgot I had cooked it the previous evening for about 20 minutes which of course mitigates a lot of the heat.

It should be noted here that the Ghost Pepper Sauce has a rating of 550,000 Scoville units which is in the same range as Law Enforcement Grade pepper spray. Per Wikipedia, the Scoville scale is a measure of the hotness or piquancy of a chili pepper, as defined by the amount of capsaicin (a chemical compound which stimulates nerve endings in the skin) present.

I'd like to humbly suggest that various Law Enforcement departments around the world should carry a bottle of this instead of pricey pepper spray! Imagine the cries of "Can I have some wings and blue cheese dressing with that?!" screamed by malefactors subdued in this manner as they fall to the ground like sacks of wet sand!!

Anyway, I digress! So, the food was prepared, the sauce added, and I sat down to watch the previous night's episode of Better off Ted. I took quite a large bite (I was using a tablespoon since there was rice in the dinner), and instantly any trace of being tired or congested from the cold I have had this week vanished in a flaming flash as my eyes went from mere slits to wide opened!

It was to say the least very spicy! While the heat of it was not too much to bear (though was certainly hotter than I prefer for casual dining!) my eyes were watering, I went through about a dozen double sheets of paper towels mopping the sweat from my head,! My eyes were tearing something fierce and the tears were streaming down my cheeks! An average person would probably have been screaming or reduced to lying and moaning in the fetal position.

How hot was it you ask?? Heck! The EPA called and mentioned the neighbors' were complaining about intense pungent fumes coming from my house. The wanted to know what was going on! They accused me of having a chemical processing plant in my garage!!!!

Well, the head sweating and eye tearing went on for about 20 minutes or so while I was eating, because of course I had to eat the entire portion! Knowing that water or soda, my usual dinner beverage, are useless on a fire like this I drank nothing while eating which took about 15 minutes. Afterward, instead of reacting the way the average person might by downing a bucket of water, I enjoyed a small scoop of vanilla ice cream which immediately stopped the burning in mouth.

I did drink about 40 ounces of diet orange soda after the ice cream over the course of the next two hours, but I figure that was to replace fluids lost as a result of the sauce. I was not overly thirsty per say.

I can see myself making a big batch of my famous baked spicy chicken wings, and in addition to a whole jar of Sambal Oelek and the other spicy items I use, I can see some amount of this making it's way into the sauce, which of course is added after the wings have been baked nice and crisp so all the heat would be maintained.

This experience also reinforced my thought that this would be an excellent addition to my ground beef chili recipe!

Finally. to my friend Dave I say thanks again, it was quite the eye opening experience!