Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Second rate reporter says what?

T R E 4 5 O N

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Let there be snark.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

The willow is too close to the house.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

You are here: Home / Food & Recipes / Food / Manly, Sporting Open Food Thread

Manly, Sporting Open Food Thread

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To continue the sweaty, competitive theme of the day, here’s a Texas Monthly note on “Denton’s Fight to Prevent the Sriracha Apocalypse”:

Earlier this week, a pro-environment entity filed a lawsuit to prevent the production of one of our nation’s most important resources.

No, not oil or gas. This legal war is being waged over Sriracha.

The city of Irwindale, California sued Huy Fong Foods to halt production of the popular Thai-inspired hot sauce. Apparently the factory, which Huy Fong opened last year to meet high demand, brings whole new meaning to the phrase “sweat shop.” Nearby residents claim the factory produces a “strong, offensive chili odor,” which requires them to “move outdoor activities indoors and even to vacate their residences temporarily.” …

In the midst of this hysteria, one Texas politician arose from the chaos and offered potential salvation. Kevin Roden, a Denton city councilman, posted an open letter on his website to Huy Fong in an attempt to bring the company to the Lone Star state.

Roden wrote that Denton has plenty to offer Huy Fong, including cheap land, shovel-ready industrial sites, a city-owned electric company, an emerging urban farm district, and “tons of college students seemingly willing to work for a daily supply of free Sriracha.”

And the odor, and alleged chili-induced eye irritation or headaches? Not a problem. According to Roden, Denton’s industrial sites are located “far away” from residential neighborhoods, so Huy Fong won’t need to worry about future lawsuits….

And in a more leisurely, contemplative tone, here’s Lauren Collins, in the New Yorker:

… In recent years, “superhots”—chilis that score above 500,000 on the Scoville scale—have consumed the attention of chiliheads, who debate grow lights on Facebook (“You can overwinter with a few well-placed T-8s”), swap seeds in flat-rate boxes (Australian customs is their nemesis), and show up in droves at fiery-foods events (wares range from Kiss My Bhut hot sauce to Vanilla Heat coffee creamer). Chilis, in general, are beautiful. There is a reason no one makes Christmas lights in the shape of rutabagas. Superhots come in the brightest colors and the craziest shapes. Their names, evoking travel and conquest—Armageddon, Borg 9, Naga Morich, Brain Strain—sound as though they were made up by the evil twins of the people who brand body lotions. Trinidad 7-Pots are so called because it’s said that one of them is enough to season seven pots of stew.

Like computers, superhots are evolving at a rate that embarrasses the phenomena of just a few years ago. In 1992, Jane and Michael Stern observed, in this magazine, that five thousand Scoville units “would be considered very hot by most people, but even that is piddling compared with the blistering fury of the habanero pepper, which can reach three hundred thousand.” (The Scoville test originally measured how many drops of sugar water it would take to dilute the heat of a chili; pungency is now determined more reliably by high-performance liquid chromatography, whose results can still be reported in Scoville units.) From 1994 to 2007, the Red Savina—a scarlet, heart-shaped pod rating 570,000 SHU—held the Guinness World Record for hottest chili pepper. Then the bhut jolokia, the existence of which had been whispered about for years among chiliheads, as though it were a vegetable Loch Ness monster, surfaced on the international scene. In 2000, R. K. R. Singh, a scientist at a Ministry of Defense research laboratory in Assam, India, where the bhut jolokia is widely grown, submitted some samples for analysis. The test results, which indicated that it was significantly more powerful than the Red Savina, made their way to Paul Bosland, a professor of horticulture and former sauerkraut expert who, for the past twenty-two years, has run the Chile Pepper Institute, at New Mexico State University. Bosland was skeptical of the Indian scientists’ numbers, but he managed to obtain some bhut jolokia seeds, which he grew into plants. In January of 2007, he filed with Guinness, which awarded the C.P.I.’s bhut jolokia (1,001,300 SHU) the new world record.

In February of 2011, Guinness confirmed that the Infinity chili, grown in Lincolnshire, England, by a former R.A.F. security guard, had surpassed the bhut jolokia by more than sixty-five thousand SHU. Only two weeks later, a Cumbrian farmer named Gerald Fowler introduced the Naga Viper. At 1,382,118 SHU, it was, Fowler said, “hot enough to strip paint.” He told reporters, “We’re absolutely, absolutely chuffed. Everyone complains about the weather and rain here in Cumbria, but we think it helped us breed the hottest chili.” He posed for the Daily Mail wearing a sombrero.

Chiliheads are mostly American, British, and Australian guys. (There is also a valiant Scandinavian contingent.) Chili growing is to gardening as grilling is to cooking, allowing men to enter, and dominate, a domestic sphere without sacrificing their bluster…

Reader Interactions

103Comments

  4. 4.

    jharp

    Huy Fong Foods Sriracha Sauce, I must admit I am hooked.

    When I am looking for something to eat I think, what can I put some sriracha sauce on?

    Very very good stuff.

    Anyone else?

  9. 9.

    RareSanity

    @efgoldman:

    Whatever it takes to win…

    @raven:

    I asked this in the previous thread, but I’ll ask it here so we don’t have to go back and forth…do you setup that sunset shot yourself?

    The lighting and colors are awesome!

    Gimme the particulars of the shot (camera, lens, exposure)…what do you use for post-processing?

  10. 10.

    Mike in NC

    Chili heads? A friend of mine in the DC area worked for the CIA in Southeast Asia. We went to a Thai restaurant near our house in Alexandria one time and he was asked if he wanted his dish served ‘American Spicy’ or ‘Thai Spicy’. He ordered the latter and struggled to finish his meal. We almost needed to call an ambulance to take him away.

  17. 17.

    thruppence

    Organicville makes a wonderful organic sriracha with a more complex, subtle taste that’s still effectively eye-watering. Check your local.

  19. 19.

    RareSanity

    @raven:

    Beautiful!

    You’re basically using the same setup that I am. What lens were you using?

    If you haven’t done it yet, look into the Nik Software suite of plug-ins. They used to be like $350 apiece, but they were bought by Google, and now the whole suite is $149…with free updates for life!

    Best 150 bucks I’ve spent on photography gear to date. They have an HDR plug-in that will blow your mind…and their black and white plug-in is awesome, lot’s of different film emulations. The whole suite is just awesome.

  26. 26.

    jharp

    @Cassidy:

    “I put it on my breakfast this morning. I like to spice up pho with it. ”

    I put it on breakfast every morning and pho is one of the best things to put it in I agree.

  27. 27.

    Firebert

    I have a coworker who’s been growing bhut jolokias for a few years. He would occasionally walk around at work with one of the damned things and exacto knife, to give samples to us all. It’s a punch in the mouth, to be sure. I started a plant this last spring, but the weather didn’t cooperate, and it didn’t produce.

  33. 33.

    RareSanity

    @raven:

    That really is a pretty versatile lens. I’ve only stopped using in it in the last few months because I got a great price on a 24-105 f/4L. It’s pretty much always on my camera now, unless I need some of that creamy bokeh that only my nifty fifty can give me.

  35. 35.

    Redshirt

    I’d like a better lens for my digital Rebel, but don’t want to pay top dollar. What’s a good mid range option for a lens with better telephoto capabilities? TIA.

  37. 37.

    RareSanity

    @raven:

    Look at a few of the introduction videos.

    I’m using LR 5 now too, and each plugin definitely adds a great deal over LR’s built in stuff. The way their plugins do “selective” editing makes them so easy to use. Their noise removal plugin is much better than LR’s, in my opinion.

    Watch this overview of the Color Efex Pro plugin to see what I’m talking about:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oalNkt7UKuI&list=PLp5lYDsQi4gmGUvE-VCGHJxn74Uk2GfpC&index=1

    The video is about 12 minutes, but just watch the first 5-6 minutes to get the feel of it.

  38. 38.

    NotMax

    No such thing as too hot or too spicy.

    When I bake ginger snaps (annually requested at the big New Year’s bash), I always put a bit of black pepper into the cookie dough. For select batches, flakes of dried Chinese peppers.

  40. 40.

    Karen in GA

    Not food related unless people eat banjos, but I want to learn to play the tenor banjo, and I’m surprised to learn how difficult it is to find a music store that carries them. There’s an online dealer with a showroom on the other side of Atlanta, but they’re only open during business hours. So close, and yet so far.

    So I guess I’m ordering online based on reviews. Not the way I want to buy an instrument, but there it is.

  41. 41.

    RareSanity

    @raven:

    I typed out a comment that had a YouTube link in it, but it went to moderation.

    Anyhew…check out the overview video for the Color Efex Pro plugin on the site, and it’ll give you the general idea of what they bring to the table. I’m really just learning how to use them, and the amount of stuff they can do can be a bit overwhelming at times, so I’m just trying to keep it simple at first.

    I used the hell out of Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro (for B&W processing and film emulation), and Analog Efex Pro (color film emulation).

  43. 43.

    Cassidy

    I feel manlier having read this.

    I’m sure a nice cup of tea and a story about the animals will fix that right up.

  44. 44.

    raven

    @RareSanity: Great I’ll look. I agree with the learning curve. I had to figure out whether to try to understand the camera or the software. I’m still plugging along with both. I also have Adobe Elements that works with LR.

    thx

    eta, This new iPhone 5s takes pretty goor pix too.

  47. 47.

    RareSanity

    @Redshirt:

    All telephoto zooms are a bit of a trade off.

    The less expensive ones are slow (high f-number, smaller aperture), and the “quality” ones are as expensive as as all get out.

    I really like my 24-105mm f/4L, and I got a pretty good price on it because it is the kit lens for the 5DmkIII and the 6D, so there are a lot of them out there. It won’t get you as close as a lens that will zoom to 200mm or 300mm, but it’s still pretty good, really sharp, and relatively fast with a constant f/4 aperture over the entire zoom range.

  55. 55.

    RareSanity

    @raven:

    Me too…believe me I am nowhere near an expert on any of this. I guess I’m just one of those, “jump in with both feet, and fight my way out” types. Most of the time I bite off more than I can chew…but I just keep chewing.

    Like for about a month, I forced myself to only use the manual exposure mode. It was pretty frustrating at first, took quite a few bad shots, missed a few shots. But after a couple of weeks, I started to get the hang of it, and I learned a lot because of it. It improved my knowledge of when I needed to override what the camera was picking for exposure in the other modes.

    I like the Nik plugins because they have just about everything you need to reproduce stuff you see other photographers doing. If I see some effect on a picture on Flickr that I like, I try to reproduce it myself to learn the method.

  57. 57.

    Karen in GA

    @raven: Thanks. Looks like the society is mostly bluegrass, which is a different type of banjo. I’m looking for a 4-string tenor for traditional Irish music.

    The new Guitar Center is one of the places I called. On a related note, last I heard GC was being run into the ground by Bain…?

    I also called Chick Music. No luck at all. Looks like I’m ordering from banjo.com, if their return policy is halfway decent.

  60. 60.

    raven

    @Karen in GA: Yea, just thinking that there are folks (no pun intended) that would be able to help. This is my friend George, I think he’s in the ATL now but still comes over for events. In the old days we’d have parties after the dances and each room would have a different style being played, Old Time, Bluegrass, Celtic and everyone would try to get George in their room.

  61. 61.

    PopeRatzy

    The city of Irwindale should have offered the owner of Huy Fong, David Tran, a $10,000,000.00 non-refundable deposit and offered to build him a stadium, err, plant in an old quarry. Then they could spend another $10,000,000.00 in environmental and legal fees.

    Worked so well the first time with Al Davis.

  64. 64.

    Karen in GA

    @raven: I was actually reading more on the society’s website. Do you attend any of their events? Looks like their next Irish dance is in December, and now the legally-binding-significant-other (husband) and I are thinking of going.

    So thank you again for mentioning them.

  65. 65.

    raven

    Unmotherfucking believable. They DON”T CALL TARGETING on LSU and take the fucking Vandy game from us with two horseshit targeting call. Just fuck these asshole.

  67. 67.

    José Arcadío Buendía

    It’s not quite offshoring… it’s more like, flushing. Yes. That’s what happens to the jobs that go from California to Texas. We flush them. We’ll keep Silicon Valley and Hollywood and you shitkickers can have all of the wage-slave, no workers’ comp having, dead end Walmart-shopping, shit job trailer park methhead, bad episode of COPS atmosphere and groundwater contaminating cancer and flipper baby creating factory shite you want.

  68. 68.

    RareSanity

    @raven:

    I just get mad that offensive players are still allowed to lower their head right before contact, but a defensive player gets called for a penalty.

    Either call all of it, or call none of it…not this double standard crap!

  71. 71.

    Narcissus

    If you have to source your chili pepper from the Indian Ministry of Defense maybe you should consider your tastebuds dead and gone

  74. 74.

    West of the Cascades

    I’d like to see Richie Incognito forced to eat a whole Naga Viper. As a practical joke, of course.

  77. 77.

    max

    @efgoldman: OK, I’m an old guy, of Central and Eastern Europe Jewish stock (bland r’us),

    Yanqui!

    but I have never understood why anyone wants to make eating actually painful, and perhaps harmful.

    So you get the nice burn. So you can sweat. And cool off.

    Now, I happen to think the superhot competition is basically some manly dicksizing but it beats the fuck out of destroying people’s brains or humiliating people. And who knows, they might actually invent a better pepper at some point. It could happen.

    {reads article}

    Yes! Empty Sriracha bottles are accepted in Denton’s recycling program! @KevinRoden #Sriracha2Denton
    — Denton Recycles (@DentonRecycles) October 31, 2013

    Denton rocks man!

    max
    [‘Austin but smaller and less commercial.’]

  78. 78.

    Yatsuno

    @max: Texas has no chance of getting the sriracha plant. The owner has said that the soil that he grows his peppers in is very specific and only plentiful in southern California. True or not, he believes it, and he harvests the peppers for immediate processing with very little transport time. Denton would have to show more than just business friendly laws to get it to move.

  84. 84.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I like hot – even very fucking hot – peppers, but I want to be able to taste something other than the burn.

  85. 85.

    ? Martin

    Not sure where in Irwindale the factory is located, but there’s a lot of area there without homes due to its many gravel quarries. I’m thinking the city didn’t zone properly because there’s really no reason for them to be anywhere near homes.

  86. 86.

    Suzanne

    My ex-husband calls Sriracha “Fuck you, round-eye” because he imagined it was Southeast Asia’s revenge on white people for the war. He’s been eating it for years, and now has Crohn’s, and STILL eats it.

    However, reading about those fiery chilis makes my ass hurt.

  87. 87.

    Violet

    @thruppence: There’s a Mexican restaurant in Dulles airport that has a ton of hot sauces. It’s got that Hula Girl hot sauce. I remember seeing it.

  88. 88.

    El Caganer

    One of our local government people – I forget who – made a pitch to the sriracha folks earlier this week. Where he thought it would locate within Philadelphia, I can’t imagine.

  89. 89.

    Amir Khalid

    I simply don’t get the mentality that turns the sensible business of measuring the “kick” from chilies into a competition to see who can stand to eat the hottest one. For some reason I don’t associate this sort of idiocy with women, so it a guy thing?

  91. 91.

    max

    @Yatsuno: Texas has no chance of getting the sriracha plant. The owner has said that the soil that he grows his peppers in is very specific and only plentiful in southern California. True or not, he believes it, and he harvests the peppers for immediate processing with very little transport time. Denton would have to show more than just business friendly laws to get it to move.

    This is SoCal we’re talking about. Which is full of desert(ish) scrub, quite like Denton, actually. Same peppers would probably grow a little better for the most part, except for November – Januaryish. (Inland Cali == Central Texas, more or less).

    @Omnes Omnibus: I like hot – even very fucking hot – peppers, but I want to be able to taste something other than the burn.

    So my girlfriend took me to this Pho place (This one, if I remember correctly!) because she said it was yummy. So we are consuming our big bowls of soup – 5$! – complete with a little added sriracha to make it spicier) and they served a bunch of veggies on the side. I saw some slices of what I thought were some bell peppers or something. 1/8″ thick horizontal slices complete with a huge core and seeds, about an inch and a half in diameter. So, seeking some crunch, I stuffed on in my mouth and bit down.

    I don’t want to say it was up at habenero levels (for all I know, given the effect, it could have been higher – or lower), but it was definitely no bell pepper. Some huge green asian pepper or something.

    So I’m start chewing away when it starts to burns. Oh. OK, well, it’s not ba…

    OW.

    10 seconds of chewing and I start to choke and gag, but considering it was a restaurant, I decided not to be rude, and manfully kept right on chewing.

    Never had a chili pepper burn my gums before. Roof of the mouth, well, yeah, a little. Not the outside gumline. And the inside of my cheeks.

    I pretty much gave up on eating my soup after I drank an entire glass of water, on account of the BURNING PAIN OF HOT SOUP.

    It went away though. So it was cool. And the blisters in my mouth were mostly gone by the next day.

    max
    [‘Great soup though. Don’t eat the pepper slices whole though.’]

  92. 92.

    wil

    @max

    If it was a pho place, it was probably just a really big jalapeno…I don’t know if the supersized ones are full of hormones or what, but it seems jalapenos have about doubled in size over the past ten years or so.

    Most of the heat is in the pith and seeds.

  93. 93.

    AdamK

    @efgoldman: I’m trying to decide which I hate more–hot food or football. I guess a sport that causes CTE is worse than a plant that sends you to the hospital to get your stomach pumped.

  94. 94.

    Keith P.

    IIRC, the hottest pepper in the world is the Trinidad Moruga (went over 2 million), and the Trinidad Scorpion was the hottest before that. I’ve got another one – Carolinia Reaper – that’s supposedly even hotter but I don’t think Guiness recognizes it as such (I currently have the ghost chili, the scorpion, and the reaper).

  95. 95.

    JoyfulA

    My nephew-in-law was a chili freak, so my sister’s Christmas present to him was the hottest stuff she could find online. He spent Christmas morning in the ER having his esophagus fixed.

  97. 97.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    and “tons of college students seemingly willing to work for a daily supply of free Sriracha.”

    Pretty much defines modern American conservative economics values; someone with a collage degree packing boxes at a hot sauce plant.

  98. 98.

    Citizen_X

    @Amir Khalid: And who’s leading the field? The Brits! In other words, the people renowned for the world’s blandest food are now giving us peppers that kill off your taste buds.

  99. 99.

    Citizen_X

    Paul Bosland, a professor of horticulture and former sauerkraut expert

    Fine, Professor. You just go ahead chasing the big money with your fancy-pants chilies, while the American sauerkraut research effort comes crashing to a halt!

  101. 101.

    Joshua

    Late to the party, so I probably won’t get a response, but…

    The “sweat shop” thing is just a dumb rhetorical flourish on the part of the journalist, right? The Huy Fong factories are not actually violating health, safety, and pay laws, right?

    Because if a bunch of white-bread NIMBY fuckers are trying to push the factory out because their sensitive nostrils can’t handle anything stronger than a Yankee Candle, that’s one thing. If the factory workers are being abused, that’s quite another.

  103. 103.

    Pococurante

    I live in Denton. I’d love Sriricha made fresh down the road…

    Well down the road, preferably to the east or west.

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