A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich - Why Do We Like Spicy Food? ft. Sohla El-Waylly

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

Today, Josh and Nicole unravel the mystery of our spicy food obsession with chef, food writer, and culinary personality Sohla El-Waylly. Leave us a voicemail at (833) DOG-POD1 Check out the video version of this podcast: http://youtube.com/@mythicalkitchen To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. is a sandwich. Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what? That makes no sense. A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What? Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich, the show where we break down the world's biggest food debates. I'm your host, Josh Scher. And I'm your host, Nicole Inaydi. And today we are joined

by a very special guest. Please welcome restaurateur, chef, food editor, and author of Start Here, Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook, Sol L. Whaley. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. What an intro. Wow, you guys are awake. Yes. Coffee number two. Well, I wake up and I drink something called C4 Ultimate Explode at about 6 a.m. It makes your throat burn, it makes your hair itch, and now I'm here.

C4 ultimate explode. Yeah. C4 is a type of explosive. And this is mainly just blue powder, erythritol, and caffeine and citric acid. Oh, I want to get some of that. I should have brought you some from home. No. God.

No. Nobody should consume this. It's poison. Text it to me later. I will. I promise. I need energy. So you got a new cookbook coming out.

Tell me about it. Your cookbook's been out for several months. Tell me about it. You know, I'm so bad at talking about it. It's a book. The idea is it teaches you how to cook. That's awesome. Each chapter is focused on a technique.

Cool. It's half savory half pastry awesome buy it please honestly that's the best buy it please it always happens when we're like hey we've made a new coffee mug

and it's like you drink out of it it holds coffee but sometimes other hot liquids please buy the mug we might sell these one day you don't sell these? no not yet

these are for us I think people would buy this. I think so, too. Yeah. We're all Southern California people. Did you grow up listening to the Red Hot Chili Peppers? That's what the intro was, if people didn't get that. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, of course. Stadium Arcadium was like the shiznit. Okay. Nicole is pro. Sola? Oh, absolutely. One of the best concerts I've ever been to. I've heard.

I saw them when I went skiing in like, where do people go ski? Park Slope or something? No, absolutely. One of the best concerts I've ever been to. I've heard. I saw them when I went skiing in like, where do people go? Park Slope or something? No, wait. Were you in California? No, I was not. I am from California, but I went snowboarding. I don't have Aspen money. But something with mountains and snow.

And the elevation was really high, so they were struggling. So they actually stopped the performance and started again. Oh, my gosh which I thought was amazing to care about your audience that much that's beautiful I have bad memories

of the Red Hot Chili Peppers because it was the only album that they played in my freshman year football weight room and that was the worst time in my life and so I have a negative

association with that so now I'm bummed why is that the only album you played that doesn't feel like something you want to get swole to

no you don't but it was all they had and it was underneath the bleachers and it was sweltering and all the older boys were mean and it was terrible

toxic masculinity is a hell of a drug speaking of which we are talking today about why people like spicy food so you were recently on an episode

of Heat Eaters eating spicy Bangladeshi food. Oh, is that why I'm here? No, it's just one reason. There's a multitude of reasons why you're here. Honestly, we just really like you. We were like kind of looking for a way in.

How can we get her in person? How can we meet her? It worked. And this is a fascinating topic. And you also, on your sub stack, you had a little bit of a saga about making hot sauces and fermenting chilies from the farmer's market. And I was fascinated by that. Why do you—

You follow my sub stack? I don't pay for it, which is bad. That's okay. I feel bad. I should. No, that's fine. To support the art that I like. I'm amazed that you read it.

I still like reading. I'm so flattered. Josh loves to read. I believe in the power of written media. RIP all of journalism. It's coming down like in flames right now. Yeah. I'm glad I've made the jump to YouTube when I did.

Because that's actually my background. I was in print journalism for Los Angeles Magazine for a while. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Oh, what a transition. And now it's like I get to vomit all of the words into a microphone instead of writing them down on a page. A lot easier because there's no editing. Or typos. Or typos.

Or typos. But that's how I write. I actually take voice notes because I find it really hard to write. My brain doesn't like it. So I just pretend like I'm talking to a friend, which I've done a lot in my life because I haven't had a lot of friends. Nice. Solid strategy.

Why do you like spicy food? It just makes everything taste better, right? I feel like it's great when I don't know what to eat. Sometimes you just have rice, egg, and you put some chili crisp on it, and it's like, whoa, this is, shall I say fire? Yes, you shall. Shout out to the Gen Z audience out there. We love you. You're the Rizzler, Skivity.

God, I don't know what that means. You've already said that like three times in the podcast. I don't know what it means. I'm trying. You've three times in the podcast. I don't know what it means. I'm trying. You've met your quota. I'm trying so hard. Nicole, do you like spicy food? I love spicy food.

So not always. I mean, it was definitely whenever I was like in high school and stuff like that, I didn't really care for it. But once I started realizing that food was like a thing, like I never realized food could be what it could be until I turned like 19. Because I had no exposure to different foods other than Persian food and American food. So I was all you need is Persian food. It might be the best food that it's my favorite cuisine. It is really incredible cuisine. I don't need to ever leave it. I love it. Can I draw a quick parallel

here? When you were eating Bangladeshi food, you were talking about eating with your fingers. Is it called a lokma? Yeah. Wow. You're paying attention. I have, my brain's weird. I don't know where my keys are right now. And then in Farsi.

It's called a lokma. Oh, wow. Yeah. So there's a crossover. There's a lot of crossover because didn't, didn't like your people come down? Probably. And conquer my people? Probably.

Dig that. And you brought a lot of like the layered rice dishes. Oh, okay. But when I did an episode on history, I have this show called Ancient Recipes. Yeah. On biryani and how a lot of the Persian, well, I haven't. Yeah, we got some rice and eggs in the kitchen if you want some. How the Persian influences helped develop biryani and everyone got mad at me

really they were like how dare you we invented this all on our own in a bubble truth hurts sometimes but that's not how any food

all food is like influenced of course I agree your people make the greatest food oh my gosh that is the highest compliment ever I can't wait to tell my mom

that's great we eat Persian food like once a week you like ormus abzi oh my god the one thing though Persian food isn't spicy I'll say that say that's not it is lacking in spice which is why again i didn't have any correlation with like spicy food and then when i went to culinary school i'm like oh my god like chilies and like ginger and like wasabi like these are things that i didn't know that you could

use in food so after that now what i'm 30 I'm 30. I love spicy food. I can't, unfortunately, my husband David has taught me to put hot sauce on everything, literally everything, anything. No meal at our table is complete without at least three hot sauces present. We have a sriracha probably, some sort of el yucateco hot sauce and then some wild card so now I love spicy food and when I go out I find myself leaning towards the spicier options because it just tastes better like you said but I didn't grow up in a

spicy home also my dad is very allergic to pepper like my dad did not so my dad so my father like cannot consume any sort of chili peppers both both let's not get involved or you're talking about like black peppercorn? So my father like cannot consume any sort of chili peppers. Is it an allergy or like a digestive issue?

Both, both. He has diverticulitis. Let's not get involved. Let's talk about your dad's medical check. Can we pull it up? So I don't know if you remember

in like Mrs. Doubtfire whenever Pierce Brosnan goes, no spice in the jambalaya. I'm allergic to pepper. That's literally my dad. That's a good Pierce Brosnan. Thank you so much. That's my dad

but not English. So he can't consume it. He like immediately has a reaction and his gut just can't handle it either. So my household was pretty much spice free. But now, no parents, no rules. I can get all the spicy food I want. And I do enjoy spicy food quite a bit. Yeah.

It's funny that Persian food doesn't have any quote unquote spice in it, right? Missing out. But the thing that it does have is a ton of acid, which is what awakened my mind in the food world. Because you put like the black limes in the gormasabzi, pomegranate molasses, which is super sour, and like the fesenjun. Right, right, right. And that, I remember eating, you know, Ashkenazi Jewish, but grew up in Southern California. So every bar mitzvah I went to, it would just be Persian food because it's so much better than our food, right? Like we're going to have chopped chicken liver

and pickled herring. Like, no, give me the gourmet sabzi, give me the fesanjoon and all that. But I know you sort of railed against the term authentic in food because like you said, everything comes from somewhere. And what we think of as like,

say modern day Thailand, right? Where a lot of people, if you ask what the spiciest food in the world is, a lot of people might tell you Thai food. And if you go and eat at a lot of modern Thai restaurants, they call it Thai spicy, right? Chili peppers didn't exist in Thai cuisine until the Columbian Exchange after, you know, the 1500s and probably even later. And so that is all somewhat of a modern development in terms of the history of food, because there are dishes that go back 10,000 years. I'm thinking like falafel is thousands of years old. The tamale is 10,000 years old. Chili peppers only left the Americas in roughly

1500. So even like a lot of South Asian food, a lot of Southwest Asian, Middle Eastern food, chili peppers weren't there until the 1500s. But that doesn't mean that spice wasn't there. So when we talk about why do humans like spicy food, there's a couple different compounds that we can talk about. The first one, chili peppers, it's all capsaicin. Capsaicin is effectively the essence of pain. So literally, when they are testing pain drugs in lab rats, they use capsaicin as the measurement poor rat I know I don't weep for the rat

I've cooked guinea pigs they're delicious nutria they eat nutria I didn't realize in Louisiana they eat nutria that's cool

yeah they hunt them in Cajun country up in Lafayette but anyways so that was like a relatively new development for anybody outside the Americas

but if we're looking for like biological reasons why people would like them, I think we can look to history and why they were initially developed. And there's a lot of Aztec writings, which they say most chili peppers probably developed within the Aztec Empire in modern-day Mexico or in the Incan Empire in modern-day Peru. And if you look at both countries, such incredible varieties of chili and incredible varieties of condiments. But in the Aztec Empire,

they think it was mostly medicinal because capsaicin can have pain-relieving effects and it's also antimicrobial. Wait, so you mean to tell me that it's a pain reliever but also it's used as a measure of pain? Effectively, yeah. So it causes pain, but it also...

Okay, icy hot. First it's icy, then it gets hot. That relieves pain, right? Yeah. Because like distracts you for like a second did either of you ever get hurt you'd scrape your knee

or whatever and like somebody would tell you to pinch a part of your hand yeah I mean I guess that's kind of what child pain

like birth is like oh tell us about childbirth childbirth is so painful that nothing else matters I'll say congratulations you know yeah I was like at first when you go in there, getting an IV hurts.

And then the contractions start and you don't even notice the IV anymore. You're like, oh, my back, nothing else hurts anymore for the rest of my life. That's actually a pretty good example of what we're talking about here with capsaicin and what it does to the body. And it raises your adrenaline. It raises your endorphins okay they found that people who are prone to wanting adrenaline rushes in life are also more prone to liking spicy food uh people who are more into inducing a controlled amount of pain in their life um not necessarily thrill seekers per se um masochist masochist right that's it's effectively masochism you're

introducing pain into yourself um and we as humans like that like do either of you chase super high heat levels i don't well okay so i thought that i had a really low spice tolerance until i went on heat eaters and i was like none of this is spicy. So maybe I do. But I grew up with it. Like every single meal you have a pile of Thai chilies. And you just like, you know, every other bite you have a little Thai chili. With Bangladeshi food, it has a lot of other like warm spices. So the chilies really cut everything. It's not very high in acid. So you need like the sharpness of the pepper.

So maybe I do eat a lot of but i started like as a baby yeah yeah so i feel nothing anymore it's kind of like when you do a lot of drugs yeah you gotta keep upping the dosage keep chasing the dragon yeah yeah what's your favorite kind of chili pepper do you have like a favorite like for me it's ahi amarillo like if i could eat ahi amarillo that is a good pepper i could eat aji amarillo Monday, Tuesday, I'd be the happiest person in the world. So hard to find, though. Yeah. I get the paste.

Yeah. We have the paste, too. Yeah, that's a good one. I mean, we always just have Thai chilies and serranos. Easy to find. Pretty solid. Sure. You know, nothing too spicy.

Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think. When I actually cook at home, like, I love Mexican food growing up in Southern California. I eat so much of it. I love serranos. It's, you know, you take the flavor of that grassiness and like instant heat punch of a jalapeno. It's beautiful. And you just like condense it a little bit.

But I did have a friend who she invited me up to her farm like four hours north. And she was growing some like kind of experimental crossbred chilies. Some superhots. Oh yeah, superhots. And she had a friend who sent her a bunch more. So she had like 27 different superhots. That's cool. Things that everybody knows of

like the Naga Viper, Butchalokia, all these things that were crossbred. Like the Jolokia, I believe, grows naturally, right? But then they've crossbred it and crossbred it to now jolokia, I believe, grows naturally, right? But then they've cross-bred it and cross-bred it to now create these crazy super hot peppers. But there's a pepper I had called a fatali pepper that was really freaking fantastic. It had the, like the aji amarillo is so bright and fruity. The same sensation you get from a habanero, the flavor.

The problem with habaneros to me is there's not enough pepper flesh to get the flavor versus the heat. Whereas aji amarillo, you get from a habanero, the flavor, the problem with habaneros to me is there's not enough pepper flesh to get the flavor versus the heat. Whereas aji amarillo, you get that. Fatali had the heat of a habanero but the flesh of an aji amarillo in a way that,

to me, was very cool. But also, I love dried chilies. So like, chile chiltepin. Sure. Which,

fun fact, birds eat them in Mexico and birds do not experience capsaicin. They're not affected by it. And so that's how the chili sort of gets spread. You mean tiny dinosaurs?

Tiny, correct. Correct. Dinosaurs never went extinct. No, they're still with us. And now we have an alternate title for the podcast. We control them now. We eat them. We do.

I was once face-to-face with a nine-foot bull ostrich, and he thought I was moving in on his girl. Oh, wow. And he made a sexually threatening gesture to me. What does that mean? Well, I'm glad you asked, because I had to ask the ostrich handler what was going on. The ostrich started furrowing its wings.

It was like, They are disgusting creatures. Very Jurassic. And then its neck started glowing red and puffing out, and I was like, It And then it's like neck started glowing red and puffing out and I was like it looks like it's about to explode mister.

Oh just like the little velociraptors. Is that what they do? You're so right. Don't you remember that scene where that guy's trying to escape

with the DNA? Is this the original Jurassic Park? From the original. I've never seen it. I've never seen a Jurassic Park. I've never seen

a Jurassic Park. You just watch the original please. I've been on the ride Park. I've never seen a Jurassic Park. You just watch the original, please. I've been on the ride like 80 times, though. You have to watch the original. Why is everybody so shocked? I've watched Jurassic Park 3 with William H. Macy multiple times. That's the worst one. I've been told.

Why are you wasting your time? But I watched it first, so now I don't want to watch the original. No, you gotta watch the original. We need to stop. This needs to turn into a Jurassic Park viewing. Okay, we all are gonna wear pajamas and hang out and watch the original. We need to stop. This needs to turn into a Jurassic Park viewing. Okay, we all are going to wear pajamas and hang out and watch Jurassic Park. I'm so down. Get the popcorn, get some chili peppers out. Have you had that, like, really spicy chip? The Paki chip? I haven't, but this one has a story about it, if you want to hear about the packy chip.

Well, my story about it, I ate it, and it was, I used to be one of those people that chased the high of, like, super hot peppers. And I remember eating Da Bomb hot sauce, and I was, like, eight years old for the first time. Horrible. And that is just not a good tasting thing. Oh, my God, it's horrid. I've grown out of that. And a lot of this comes down to they did a study where they found that women who enjoy spicy food tend to be more intrinsically motivated, meaning they like the endorphin rush. They like the flavor. Men who eat spicy food tend to be more externally motivated because of toxic masculinity and all that. You are rewarded from a young age.

And that was definitely me. But anyways, I have a pretty high spice tolerance. And so I thought the Paki one chip challenge was going to be super cool for me. A breeze. And then I ate it and it absolutely floored me. I was on the ground. I was doing push-ups. I was drooling out of my mouth.

I had to cancel a date that night. I literally had to call her and was like, I don't know how to explain this, but I ate a chip and now I can't go out with you. That's right. Because I'm in distress. Did you have another opportunity at that date? I did. And then I wish I wouldn't have overall, you know, with how it ended.

It was fine. Yeah, but now you've got a great fiance. Sometimes if you're dating somebody and they have two phones, it's like, why do you have two phones? One for the plug and one for the load. The chip was trying to tell you something. What? Kevin Gates referenced all the podcasts. Have you had it?

No, I'm terrified of that. I'm afraid of, like, the stunt hot. Yeah. But, well, I also, I say that, but we also got the, like, the hot sauce pack from Hot Ones. Because we wanted to do it ourselves. Yeah, yeah. But, I don't know. Did you do a full Hot Ones lineup?

We got, you can, like, get all of the hot sauces. Like, did you make the wings and do it? No, we want to. We want to. We want to get some friends that we feel comfortable with like having explosive diarrhea around. Good. And then just like. Who are they?

Name them. Shout them out. We all got our list of diarrhea friends. I'm probably sure. We actually, we got the same pack and we have all the hot sauces in our fridge. So if you want to, if you want to light it up. We once combined all of them and then added clarified butter to it to make a... Oh, that sounds good.

It was so good. Yeah, yeah. And we put it on a chicken sandwich. It was absolutely delightful. Annalise tried it. Devon, it was good, right? It was good. It was good.

She doesn't sound convinced. One thing that I was wondering with the fact that chili peppers didn't reach a lot of these parts of the world that we associate with chili peppers, what the hell caused heat in food? Like what were people using before that? Certainly they weren't just eating bland food. And this is a fascinating thing that I didn't know until researching for this podcast.

Black pepper, right, very common in South Asian cuisine. I mean, you know, you look at like the Spice Coast in like southern India and Kerala, black peppercorn, like Malabar pepper was trafficked like gold throughout human history. I didn't understand it until I was at my best friend Deep's house. His family is from Gujarat, and they made masala chai or masala cha, as they would call it. Hey, we say cha too. You say cha too? Cha is taken over, and it makes me sad. Wait, that's so funny.

Sometimes say cha. Yo, cha gang. Yeah. I'm sorry. What too you say cha too? chai's taken over and it makes me sad wait that's so funny sometimes say cha yo cha gang yeah I'll start I'll start I say chai because I'm Persian but I'll say cha

when it permits when it's permitted it's because the people who say chai said it first in American media so now it's just chai but

we'll start saying cha sometimes I even say chai and I have I just I don't know who I am anymore oh that's so funny yeah I just say choc shout out to malini naik for making me masala chow in the morning in high school um but i drank it i hadn't had it in probably 10 years but i recently uh visited them for um diwali uh and i had a cup of masala chow in the morning and it was as if after three sips it was like i had just eaten a hot wing like the

same sensation in my mouth and there's no chili pepper in it there's no capsaicin in what i was experiencing but what there was was gingerol and uh what is it like pepper pepper on it yeah but it's the it's the uh piperine piperine so it's piperine and gingerol. They are not capsaicin. They don't have capsaicinoids in them, but they make you experience the same amount of heat. And y'all know the Scoville scale, right? Sure. Do you guys know how the Scoville scale was originally calculated?

A guy named Scoville? Wilbur. Did he eat a bunch of peppers and then cry? How many tears? Like kind of close. Kind of close. He had a bunch of other people do it. But what he did is he... His diarrhea homies?

What? He had his diarrhea homies. We all got him. We all got him. He gathered all his diarrhea homies, and he ground up chili peppers, and he would dilute them in, like, an alcohol and water solution. And however much he had to dilute them until people said that

they could no longer taste spice is what he turned into the Scoville scale. And this is happening over 100 years ago. So it's very rudimentary science. That's really cool. Not very scientific. Not at all. Or objective. Absolutely not.

Which makes sense because sometimes I'll eat a pepper that says it's like 100,000 Scoville units. And I'm like, hmm, I've had hotter. Oh, yes. thousand Scoville units and I'm like, I've had hotter. Oh, yes. And even, I mean, peppers, you've all, you ever get one of those big jalapenos and you're just like, I know this is not going to be spicy. I do feel like there is something happening to the jalapenos. They're getting so bland.

They're like bell peppers now. I think there's some kind of conspiracy. Big jalapeno. Big jalapeno doing something. I think one of the clues is in Sriracha, is in the Sriracha shortage. Oh, beans. There's a Sriracha shortage? So there was a Sriracha shortage.

It's now over? Well, so I went to 99 Ranch recently, and there was tons of Sriracha, but no Samba Olek, which made me very sad. There's a Samba Olek shortage now. That's the superior one. I know. This is the problem. like which made me very sad this is sambal olek shortage now i know this is the problem i but they they use red jalapenos in sriracha and they were using a california farm yeah yeah um but then they terminated their contract with them just general business disputes they were

like we can get cheaper from mexico and then the farm in mexico couldn't supply them and there were all these sort of allegations like was it is it climate change is it you know uh soil being leached of nutrients or did they just not diversify their farms enough um but something happened in the jalapenos of that farm i think that's not just in my mind it's not just in your mind also the farm that they used to get underwood farms underwood family farms underwood family farms i had like my birthday there yeah you got drunk and picked strawberries in the fields yeah that sounds like a lovely birthday it was such a good birthday i took a i took like 10 of my bougiest friends

and I got them all drunk on a party bus and then we went to Underwood Family Farms and I said, okay, time to pick strawberries for like three hours. No water.

Just a drunk up of tequila and beer and they're like, why did you bring us here? I'm like, I want to make strawberry shortcake for my birthday and I went to my husband's

and he made strawberry shortcake. Do you think the people at Underwood Family Farms enjoyed you doing that? Because you know it's for children, right? They bring children there to teach them about

how zucchini grows. I mean, did I see kids? Yeah, but were we far away from them? Also, yeah, the fields are really big. But Underwood is now making their own

competitor sriracha. Is it now? Out of spite, which I really, really enjoy. That's awesome. But yeah, there are several other kinds of spice. Are you a fan of like Sichuan food? Absolutely.

Yeah. And the key to that is actually the Sichuan peppercorns, which is a totally different kind of spice. Completely different. Can you describe the sensation of a Sichuan peppercorn? Well, it's called mala, which is, it translates to like, cool, it's like a numbing hot. Icy hot.

Icy hot. Oh my gosh, it's the original icy hot. Maybe if you don't have any, just put, make a bomb of Sichuan peppercorns. I mean,

they literally have used, yeah. Yeah, bomb. They are used in medicine. We have to clarify that when there's brown people in the room.

What were you saying about Szechuan food? what? oh well I was just saying that's another type of spice or another thing that we would consider spice that people love

the numb that numbing but it's not related to capsaicin at all but they also do use a ton of actual chilies that's one of my favorite cuisines in the entire world

and has a completely different dimension of taste totally I love there's this place called Szechuan Impression chilies. That's one of my favorite cuisines in the entire world. It has a completely different dimension of taste. Totally. I love, there's this place called Sichuan Impression that does incredible Sichuan food. They have, it's the only menu in the U.S. I've seen with bullfrog on it. Oh, fun. And it was, we actually got it and it was actually very, very delicious. As someone who enjoys frog and other things like that. Does it taste like chicken? It does. It's like chicken's a cooler cousin. The texture is a little bit slimier. Is it like chicken with a hint of fish? Because I feel like a lot of frog is like fishy chicken. This one wasn't too fishy, which I

actually enjoyed, but the texture was a little slimier. But I kind of like slimy texture, so I'm not anti in that sense. What's that one thing? It's also numbing and they put it in cocktails. sense. What's that one thing? It's also numbing and they put it in cocktails. The little yellow buzz buttons, also known as Jambu. So both of those. So they're so cool. It's the same chemical compound. I wrote that the chemical compound is called hydroxy alpha sun shul, and it comes from the Xanthos island plant. Did you look up every kind of chili? I did. No, I really did. Look at my notes. So I was so curious about why we experienced what we colloquially call spice but does not come from capsaicin. So the modern Scoville scale does not rank gingerine or piperine on it because it doesn't have capsaicin. The modern Scoville scale developed in the 80s just measures capsaicin per square part.

Interesting. But the original one was all based on subjective taste, which food is so much of subjective. Whether your mouth has different receptors, everybody's different. Whether you grew up with it and have a higher heat tolerance.

In the old school Scoville test, black peppercorn and ginger would show up on it and they've been estimated at 150K and 60K, respectively. Who were they being

tested on? Just his friends? Randos. Diarrhea friends. His pharmacist friends? No, they would do what studies do where they get a randomly selected group of people to try and create an average.

But the Jambu, it's the xanthoxylum plant, which Sancho pepper or the prickly ash tree, you find it in Japanese cuisine and also Korean cuisine. Sichuan pepper, same thing. So that's what creates the numbing effect. I do feel like people underestimate just regular black pepper. 100%. Because we always use it in everything and a lot of recipes just like randomly tell you to put it in there thoughtlessly. But when it's fresh and depending on how you grind it and incorporate it, you can get a lot of different kinds of flavors. You can get quite a lot of heat. Yeah. I love like when it's coarsely ground and you can just bite into it. Yeah, same. You need to wake up in the morning,

throw some peppercorns into whatever blue thing you're having. I should, honestly. I just want to feel something. But no, I agree. That's why we eat peppers, because we all just want to feel something. It's 100% true. It distracts you from the fact you're barreling towards death.

Oh, yeah. That's kind of my whole life's goal. It actually is. It's why I listen to loud, heavy metal music. It's why I lift weights until my hands bleed. It's why I eat spicy food because it distracts you from death. Because we're all sad. We're all sad.

Moral of the story. Sola, what do you think happens when you die? Nothing. You just go into a hole and it's done? You don't even go anywhere. Yeah. Just gone. There's no you, I guess.

Just deleted from the earth? It's just like before you were born. Yeah. But the after. Oh, man. I don't believe in something something though. Believe in peppers. I think we struggle to dissociate from the self, right? So like even when I

said like you go into a hole in the ground, it's like no, there is no you. You is the spark of consciousness. This took a turn. It always does. Go somewhere. And then there's mustards, right? People are like, mustards are spicy. Mustards, you know, menthol-y.

Oh, you're going to Philippe? You know, I was actually, I watched a video on this because I do research too. And they said there's hot spicy, there's nasal spicy, and then there's cold spicy things like menthol and peppermint. Oh, cold spicy. Which I would never consider spicy. But it's more like a sensation. And I really love like minty sensations. As a former Camel Crush smoker, I love the taste and intensity of menthol.

I think it's underutilized in our food a lot. I agree with that. And that's just how I feel about this. We once made freezing cold Cheetos where we basically just took a bunch of mentholated things like Altoids and blended them up and then added blue food dye and dusted them onto homemade Cheetos. Is this on the YouTube channel? Yeah. I need to watch some of this. You should watch it.

Don't ask Nicole what happened. Freezing cold Cheetos? Like where did you come up with that idea? Well, you see, Flamin' Hot Cheetos existed. We said, what if opposite? Yeah, content. Content. Contentetos existed. We said, what if opposite? Yeah, content. Content. Content came up. Content game. 100.

We should end this with me trying to pronounce the chemical compound found in mustard to cause heat. Because I copied and pasted it from Wikipedia. Go for it. Allylisothiocyanate and 4-hydroxybenzyl isothiocyanate. God bless you.xybenzyl isothiocyanate.

God bless you. That's not as catchy as capsaicin. Yeah, capsaicin's way better. Way better. Way better. Alright, Sola and Nicole, you've heard what you and I have to say. Now it's time to find out what other wacky opinions are rattling out there in the universe. It's time for a segment we call Opinions Are Like Casseroles. There's a lot more singing in this than I remember.

We sing so much on this podcast. We sing a lot. It's kind of redonkulous. I love me some oaky, dude. I love doing some oaky. Does that mean everyone has a casserole? Yes. Yeah, everyone's got one and they smell like

onions is the timeline that we created somebody wrote a fan wrote a full song you wrote like a full verse um opinions are like casseroles everyone's got one and they smell like onions and then he kept going which is cool you should play that i know finding young talent we do also shout out to uh the new metal band called Glass Eyes from Minnesota. We have a show called Last Meals where I talk to people about death and eat their last meal with them. And the tagline is, every person has exactly two things in common. We all got to eat and we're all going to die. They used that as a lead up to their breakdowns.

The breakdown is when everyone gets in the pit and they just start punching the air hoping someone walks into their fist. And it's really heavy. And so there's like everybody's gotta eat. And you know, I was really flattered. Is that singing? Yeah, well they'll call it like a growl. And then there's another one that comes in with a mid-scream. So it's like yeah, me bad! You know, it kind of hits one of those.

I can't do it good. Sola can do it good. You can do it fine. Sola, hit her with a mid-scream. Huh. That was good. Sola can do it good. You can do it fine. Sola, hit her with a mid-scream. Huh. That was good. That was good. You know, there's this toy that the kid has that's called a kick and play, and it has songs. And I like to do metal versions of the songs.

Nice. It's like, everybody plays! The animals play all day! These are so cute. So that's my scream. Yeah. Oh, you looked it up immediately. Yeah, cute.

That's what my brain is filled with now. I love that. Let's get to that first opinion. What is up, Josh and Nicole? Travis here from Dover Plains, New York. And my hot take is that curry belongs in ramen. I spent some time over in Japan, and there was a place that did international ramens and whatnot,

and there was one that did multiple different kinds of curry ramen, but I love putting any sort of really spicy curry in my ramen. Also, Josh, great Bloodywood shirt. Oh, let's go. Love you guys. Bloodywood is India's current top metal band and my Gujarati homie, I made him go to the show so he could translate the Hindi

for me to sing in. That's awesome. That was a lot about political corruption. Yeah, great band though. Love me some Bloody Wood. What do you think? Curry and ramen? Yeah, of course. Why not? Sounds great. Yeah. Noodles, curry, like cow soy. I mean, I'm into it.

Me too. What's not to like? Yeah. I fully agree. I always get tripped up by the word curry in general. That's right. Because it's like, what do people actually mean by it? Because it's such a, what do they call it?

It makes some people mad. Yeah. Or curry makes people mad. But there are places in the world where curry is a specific thing. But there are places in the world where curry is a specific thing. Like I know that originally it was the colonists in India kind of downplaying the complexity of the cuisine. It started somewhere bad, but then it ended somewhere good because when you go to, what is it called? The islands down here.

Caribbean. Caribbean. When you go to the Caribbean, curry is a thing. And then you go to the Caribbean curry is like curry is a thing and then you go to Japan and curry is a thing and you can't just tell people that you can't call it that so I

think we should embrace curry yeah hell yeah and so many things in food are culturally contextually dependent

right so you hear somebody from a commonwealth country say I love chili they're talking about a chili pepper and not the you know

mexican american dish chili the stew right i also believe chili is a curry technically but how do you spell all those i feel like i always trip up right chili chili chilies same well so much like i'll just say like chile all the time because i grew up in southern california so you will go to uh any like mexican market or just a normal big box grocery store and they have a whole section of dried chile. You know what I mean? And so I don't know. Is there one L? I generally put two Ls if I'm saying chili in terms of like Singaporean chili crab, for instance.

You know? But I don't know. That's a trip. I say C-H-I-L-L-Y. Just all encompassing for all of them. For me, I mean, I love most of the curries you guys talked about. I think right now at this current state on January 26th at

11.54am, what curry I would like with my ramen noodles, I would probably want Japanese curry with like the potatoes and the carrots and the dark delicious flavor. I think that's what I would want right now with you guys at like a dinner table.

We did this with Filipino curry with curry curry. Oh yeah. I made curry curry ramen one time with the peanut butter and the shrimp paste. That was so good. That was sexy too. But I think right now Japanese curry is like, it's just so cool. It's so easy to make and it's so fun to make. So I would want ramen noodles with my Japanese curry. And if somebody says curry chicken versus chicken curry, like that tells you all you need to know. So if somebody says chicken curry, they're probably referring to something from South Asia. If they say curry chicken, that's Caribbean. So in Jamaica, you don't have chicken curry,

you have curry chicken. And like you exclusively call it that. So that's what I love about the nuances of food, right? It's, you know, like you said, it started from a bad place, ended up in an awesome place where you can say curry chicken versus chicken curry and people know exactly what you're talking about. And you get to eat delicious things. Just don't order curry in India. Don't order curry in India. Hey, this is Marcus.

Hi. From Massachusetts. What's up? Just want to say I love the voicemail. It's so sultry. No, my opinion is most people don't like hot sauce at least the flavor

they're just looking for something spicy and they're trying to be hip and they're trying to be bold, adventurous oh that's a hot take I mean I like hot sauce I'm not trying to be bold

I'm the least to be bold. I'm the least bold person there is. No, I think every hot sauce is different. Some are just going to slam you in the face, you know, like the bum. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then there's hot sauces that bring acidity, bring flavor, bring umami. So I don't think it's just like a toxic masculinity like bro thing. I think hot sauce is flavor. Yeah.

Totally. I do think there's a little bit of truth to that. Sometimes when I add hot sauce to food, I realize what I really want is acid and salt. I was going to say that, yeah. And so I would be open – like mustard is – this is a hot take. Mustard is just a hot sauce, right? Uh-huh. Sure it is, yeah.

It's vinegar, salt, and then a thing that we perceive as spicy, you know, that's mixed together. That's the same formula as like red rooster hot sauce. And you could thin it out. There's like a condiment in Hawaii they call chili pepper water that is like super, super thin. Or at Filipino restaurants, they'll do the coconut vinegar with just a little bit of chili in there. On the bottom, yeah, yeah. But I think people do just want more vinegars on their food as well. Totally.

I think there's not a lot of vinegar foods in the American lexicon of food. So we substitute it with spice plus vinegar plus salt. So just put more vinegar in your food. Vinegar is delicious. Acid is good, and it's a very important part of food. So I understand a little bit. God, I also do love hot sauce though. Put more somak on it sure put more somak on stuff life's short put some on it hello love the pod my name is lauren i'm from pennsylvania outside of philly go birds

i actually went to school in bethleh, Josh, so, like, loving all the PA references. My hot take is that spicy food challenges, like the B-dubs, blazing wings challenge, stuff like that, is only perpetuating toxic masculinity. My boyfriend and his brothers love to do the spicy food challenges and try to, like, order the spiciest food. But I know it's just so they can try to prove that they can do it not because they actually enjoy it but like actual spicy food great just like extremely spicy food just to show off your ability only perpetuates toxic masculinity love the pod love you guys okay goodbye yeah she went to lehigh lehigh university my uh i think my uncle used to teach there so wow shout out to lancaster valley um toxic masculinity sola oh i completely agree yeah yeah that's the only reason that those like that pocket chip exists i mean i think that that's like one of the bad examples

of spicy food it doesn't taste good anymore what are you getting out of it besides showing off and blowing out your pants nothing yeah i agree with I agree with that. I will. No, let me play devil's advocate. If we're talking about bad behavior from men, let me for no reason say, let me play devil's advocate. But no, there's an element of bonding to that, right? Like that's why we do a lot of these things. You know, certain uncomfortable situations can bring people closer together. I grew up sports where like my entire life, that's all of sports, right? You know, coaches running you through conditioning drills, you're all miserable and you're miserable

together. I think there's some unique, you know, situation of human bonding that happens in those scenarios. Trauma bonds over pocket chips. Trauma bonds over pocket chips. Misery loves company. Or like, but I do, there are still times when I really love chasing that spicy high and it's not through stuff like Pocky Chips, but my favorite

Somtum spot Thai papaya salad. Okay, yeah. Well, actually, it's Somtum Lao, so it's a Lao papaya salad. It's a northern Thai spot. It's called Kim Thai

in North Hollywood. They've won like the Thai ambassador Somtum challenge like 12 years in a row. Incredible. I do the fermented mud crabs pounded in there. And I ask for it as spicy as possible. And you get like the more spice in a dish, I think the more it can elevate all the umami, all of the sweet, all of the other elements.

You know? And it's the Thai term. What is it? We talked about this with the sriracha episode. I don't remember. There's a Thai term though for like it's balance, about this with the sriracha episode. I don't remember. There's a Thai term, though, for like it's balance, but it's balance all the way up the ladder. So it's basically like if you raise the heat, you raise the sugar,

you raise the acid, and I can't remember it. Seasoning to the edge. It's a double talk. It's a double talk word. Don't remember it. Dang, that's a bummer. But anyway, so I do still like getting into that. But yeah, it is rooted in toxic masculinity.

It's the same reason I still drink black coffee, even though I would probably prefer cream and sugar in it. I will say, I don't think anybody who does like, either if it's like massive amounts of food challenges, like super spicy ones, I don't think anybody's doing it because they enjoy it. Like that's never the point of winning a food challenge. It's to show that you can do it,

to show that you can be number one. So no one's sitting there like, this is a delicious, I don't know, 10-pound pastrami burger. No one's doing it because they're like, yum, hmm. They're doing it to test their physical limits always. So at El Tapayac in East LA, I did their Manuel Special Challenge. It's a six-pound burrito. Also happens to be very delicious, but I did it with former NFL player Christian Yount,

and he didn't finish it, and I finished it with former NFL player Christian Yount and I he didn't finish it and I finished it in under 10 minutes I have done the blazing challenge at Buffalo Wild Wings Pat smoked it but as a

male hubris coming back to bite me I didn't wash my hands because I was capsizing entered into the porousness of my fingers

and I had to soak my hands in ice water to go to sleep that night and also so I don't know if you know this, you're kind of sitting with a celebrity here, former Guinness World Record holder for most baby food eaten in one minute. Sure. So I am the problem. No, I mean, in terms of being toxic, food challenges is like, go for it.

You know, if eating hot sauce makes you feel better about your penis, just do it. That's right. And it does. Clum clum. Clum clum. Oh, I don't know that term. I love that. Yeah, and it's how I like to cook. You balance, but you don't stay in stasis. You balance up the ladder.

Keep going, baby. Clum clum your way to the top. Hey, Josh and Nicole. This is Connor from St. Louis, Missouri, home of the saltine thick pizza topped with the amazing Provel cheese. I am here to make you even more concerned about us from the best in the Midwest by giving you my hot food take. Uh, this one is pretty spicy for a hot food take because I'm a hot sauce connoisseur. I'm a member of multiple hot sauce of the month clubs. That's the gift that people always get me.

And for a snack, I like to just take a piece of bread, any bread, douse it in hot sauce, any of it. I think you get to actually taste the sauce, and I think the sauce tastes great. So let me know if you think that's weird. It probably is, but I do not care. Have a great day. First, I have to ask you about St. Louis-style pizza. Have you had it? No. Saltines? Did I hear correctly? So St. Louis-style pizza, we have a long-running feud. We've gotten a lot of one-star reviews from St. Louisians, and I will not back down. St. Louis-style pizza, we have a long-running feud. We've gotten a lot of one-star reviews from St. Louisians. And I will not back down.

St. Louis-style pizza is not pizza. It's an unleavened dough. So it's like a matzah. It's just rolled out and then baked super crispy. And then they put a delicious processed cheese called Prevel on top. But my problem is it's just a cracker. It's a saltine cracker, and I don't like it. Does that interest you?

Yes, it does. Any kind of pizza interests me. You know, I'm going to give it one shot. And I'm not opposed to processed cheese

in the right context. Like, you have enough to drink, that pizza sounds perfect. No arguing with that. Honestly, the cracker makes sense when you're really drunk.

More than like a fluffy piece of bread. I can't get down with it. I need the chew. Pizza, the chew is intrinsic to me. I like to leave it all pizza. I need the chew. Pizza, the chew is intrinsic to me. I like to leave it all pizza. Like I support the deep dish, you know, the pan.

I also believe in all pizza. It's just this isn't pizza. I grew up making a lot of tortilla pizzas at home. So, yeah. And I still do. I still do that. When I'm really sad, you make a, get a tortilla, put it in a cast iron skillet. It's not bad.

Yeah. I agree. I agree with you I agree hot sauce and bread it's fine do it whatever makes you happy

you know that's my thought sometimes I just like in the middle of the night I just need like a hit of savory and I'll have a spoonful of nutritional yeast with soy sauce

and it's so weird yum it like hits the spot I love nooch sometimes I like lick my finger because it's my nooch because my husband doesn't eat.

I go. And I dip my finger in nutritional yeast. Like a pixie stick kind of thing. Yeah, I just rub it in my gums. It's delicious. But hot sauce and bread. No. Why?

I don't. Don't do it. It's not good. It's like mustard and bread, right? We've discussed mustard is a hot sauce. I don't put mustard on my bread. Not because of my allergy. It just doesn't make sense. I need something else. One other thing.

Mayonnaise. A piece of cheese. No, not another condiment. Not another condiment. Like something else. One thing. I don't know what it is. A pat of butter would suffice for me. A hot sauce sandwich does feel like something from the Great Depression. Yeah, I know. Two slices of white bread,

hot sauce. Stimulate like factory workers, you know, make it work faster. It's like a zin, like packing a zin. Oh God, I hate that. I can't wrap my head around it,

but do you, boo? Do you? This is how hot sauce people taste hot sauce. They dip bread in it. And so if he's part of multiple hot sauce of the month clubs, that's probably where

he got it from. Shout out to Fuego Box. They do really great work. Not a sponsor. They've introduced me to some awesome hot sauces. Was that sent to your college campus? Yeah, and then somebody was receiving it for four years after I moved, and they were taking the hot sauces. So good for them.

But I would do this. I'm a big proponent of mayonnaise on toast instead of butter. I really like mayonnaise. That's fine. Not to be mayonnaise on toast instead of butter. I really like mayonnaise. That's fine. Not to be the white guy in the group. That feels very white. Thank you. Just a slice of bread with mayonnaise.

I am expressing my culture. This is how I connect to my ancestors. We should not shame mayonnaise people. I knew a girl who ate mayonnaise sandwiches in school. She was cool. Was she white? I don't remember. Well, good for you.

I don't remember. Was she white? Statistically speaking. Well, good for you. I don't remember. Statistically speaking. Yeah, she was white. But I will still make that, and then I will take one of the at least 12 hot sauces in my fridge, and I will douse it on there. Current one going is Zab's Dadil pepper sauce. That's good. Toast the bread? I do, yeah, but I don't believe in toaster ovens, and I don't want to heat the oven, and so I do it in a pan.

Have you used that Japanese toaster oven that Emily Mariko has? Oh my God. Emily Mariko, new appliance just dropped. We got it. It's amazing. It toasts it with steam. So it's like a tiny little convection, tiny little combi oven. Damn.

So it's like fluffy, crispy. Use it for your next mayonnaise toast. I promise you I will. I just started doing the seaweed with the salmon and the's like fluffy, crispy. Use it for your next mayonnaise toast. I promise you I will. I just started doing the seaweed with the salmon and the rice. Iconic. I'm three years late to that. Anyways, on that note, Sola, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Tell the people where they can find you. Oh, please buy my book if you want to learn how to cook or if you know how to cook and you just want to know more science. There's a lot of science technique, all that stuff in there.

I'm also on Ancient Recipes with the History Channel, New York Times, Cooking. I think those are the main things. Yeah. She's out here. No, I do love that your cookbook is very technical. There's like a huge gap right now in people who are interested in food and actually know how to cook, which I think is fascinating. And so everybody go out, buy your book, learn how to cook. And thank you so much for listening to A Hot Dog is a Sandwich.

We've got new audio only episodes every Wednesday and a video version here on YouTube every Sunday. If you want to be featured on Opinions or at Casseroles, you can give us a call at 833-DOGPOD1. See you all next time. Bye.