♪ Can’t stop, addicted to the shindig ♪ ♪ Chop Top, he says I’m gonna win big ♪ ♪ Choose not a life of imitation ♪ ♪ Distant cousin to the reservation ♪ I think I’m in the wrong podcast. This is “A Hot Dog 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 Scherer. And I’m your host Nicole Enayati. 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,” Sohla El-Waylly. Welcome to the show. Woo! Thanks for having me. What an intro. Wow. You guys are awake. Yes. Yeah. Coffee number two. Well, I wake up and I drink something called C4 Ultimate Explode at about 6:00 AM. Ooh. It makes your throat burn, it makes your hair itch, and now I’m here. C4 Ultimate Explode? Mm-hmm. Yeah, C4 is a type of explosive and- Oh, is it? This is mainly just blue powder, erythritol, and caffeine, and citric acid. Ooh, I wanna get some of that. I should have brought you some from home. Is this an a ad? No. God. No. No. C4- Nobody should consume this. It’s poison. Text it to me later. I will. I promise. I promise. I need energy. Yeah. Sohla, 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. I- Buy it please. This 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. Are we gonna sell these? Ever? We might sell these one day. You don’t sell these? Not yet. These are special 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. Me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course. “Stadium Arcadium” was like the shiznit. Okay, Nicole is pro. Sohla? 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, wait. Colorado- Were you in California? No. Apsen. 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. That’s so funny. Which I thought was amazing. Like, to care about your audience that much. That’s beautiful. I have bad memories of the Red Hot Chili Peppers ’cause 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. Ooh, I’m so sorry. So now I’m bummed. Why is that the album you play? That doesn’t feel like something you wanna get swole to. We don’t know. 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. Sohla, you were recently on an episode of “Heat Eaters” eating spicy Bangladeshi food. Oh, is that why I’m here? Eh, not- Like, it’s just one reason. There’s a multitude of reasons why you’re here. Honestly we just really like you, and we were like kind of looking for a way- 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 Substack, 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. But why do you- You follow my Substack? I don’t pay for it, which is bad. I feel 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. A little nerdy. It’s coming down like in flames right now. Yeah. I’m glad I made the jump to YouTube when I did, ’cause that’s actually my background. I was in print and journalism, wrote for Los Angeles Magazine for a while. Oh, I didn’t know that. Yeah, yeah. Whoa, 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 ’cause- Yeah. There’s no editing. Or typos. Or typos. But that’s how I write. I actually take voice notes ’cause 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 ’cause I haven’t had a lot of friends. 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. You can say fire. Yes, you shall. Shout to the Gen Z audience out there. We love you. You’re the rizzler, Skibidi. God, I don’t know what that means. You’ve already said that like three times in other podcasts. 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 foods? I love spicy foods. 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 ’cause I had no exposure to different foods other than Persian food and American food. So I was- But all you need is Persian food. Oh, you’re so right. It might be the best food that… It’s my favorite cuisine. It is really incredible cuisine. I love Persian food. You don’t need to ever leave it. I love it. Can I draw a quick parallel here? Sure. When you were eating Bangladeshi food, you were talking about eating with your fingers. And is it called a lokma? Yeah. Wow. You’re paying attention. My brain’s weird. I don’t know where my keys are right now. And then in Farsi- It’s called a luqma. Oh wow. Yeah. So there’s some crossover. There’s a lot of crossover because didn’t like your people come down- Probably. And conquer my people? Probably. Take 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 eaten- Oh. 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? I’m sorry. They were like, “How dare you?” I’m sorry. Truth hurts. 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 ghormeh sabzi? Oh my god. The one thing though, Persian food isn’t spicy. No, it’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 love spicy food. 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 Tucateco 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- Oh. You talking chili peppers or you’re talking about like black peppercorn? Both. So my father like cannot consume any sort of chili peppers. It’s 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 a 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. Missing out. Missing out. But the thing that it does have is a ton of acid, which is what like- That’s true. Sour. Awakened my mind in the food world, ’cause you put like the black limes in the ghormeh sabzi, pomegranate molasses, which is super sour. Sure, sure. And like the fesenjan. Right, right, right. And that I remember eating, I, 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, what’re we gonna have? Chopped chicken liver and pickled herring? Like, no, give me the ghormeh sabzi, give me the fesenjan, 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 where a lot of people if you asked 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- Thai spicy. They call it Thai spicy, right? Chili peppers didn’t exist in Thai cuisine until the Columbian exchange after- No way. 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. Sure. 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. Cool. The first one, chili peppers, it’s all capsaicin. Right? Sure. Capsaicin is effectively the essence of pain. So when they’re like- Literally when they are testing pain drugs in lab rats, they use capsaicin as the measurement. Poor rats. I didn’t know that. I don’t weep for the rat. I have cooked Guinea pigs. They’re delicious. Everything is food. Nutria. Nutria. They eat nutria. I didn’t realize in Louisiana they eat nutria. Oh, that’s cool. Yeah, they hunt them. Little water rats. 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. Interesting. 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. What’re you talking about? Okay, Icy Hot. First it’s icy, then it gets hot. That relieves pain, right? Yeah. ‘Cause it 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. No I mean, I guess that’s kind of what child pain is, like birth is like. Oh, tell us about childbirth. Childbirth is so painful that nothing else matters. You know? Honestly congratulations. 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, nothing else hurts anymore.” Sure. 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. Okay. They found that people who are prone to wanting adrenaline rushes in life are also more prone to liking spicy food. People who are more into inducing a controlled amount of pain in their life, not necessarily thrill seekers per se- Masochists. Masochists. Right. It’s effectively masochism. You’re introducing pain into yourself. 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 the sharpness of the pepper. So maybe I do eat a lot of, but I started like as a baby. Yeah. So I feel nothing anymore. It’s kinda 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 aji amarillo. Like, if I could eat aji amarillo- That is a good pepper. If 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, yeah, yeah. 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 ate so much of it. I love serranos. It’s, you know, you take the flavor of that grassiness and like instant heat punch of jalapeno. It’s beautiful. Yeah. 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. Okay. Some super hots. Oh yeah. Super hot. And she had a friend who sent her a bunch more. So she had like 27 different super hots. That’s cool. Things that everybody knows of like the Naga Viper. Bhut jolokia. Bhut jolokia, all these things that were crossbred. Like, the jolokia I believe grows naturally. Right? But then they crossbred it and crossbred it to now create these crazy super hot peppers. But there’s a pepper I had called a fatalii pepper that was really freaking fantastic. It had the, like the aji amarillo is so bright and fruity. Beautiful. Mm-hmm. 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. Sure. Versus the heat. Whereas aji amarillo, you get that. Fatalii 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. That’s a good one. Fun fact, birds eat them in Mexico and birds do not experience capsaicin. They’re not affected by it. Oh cute. And so that’s how the chilies sort of get spread. You mean tiny dinosaurs? Correct, correct. Dinosaurs never went extinct. No. They’re still with us. And now we have an alternate title for the podcast. And 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 because the ostrich started furrowing its wings and was like They are disgusting creatures up close. Aw, I wanna ride one. Very Jurassic. And then its like neck started glowing red and puffing out. And I was like, “It looks like it’s about to explode, Mr.” And then he was like- Oh, just like the little velociraptors. Is that what they do? You’re so right. Right? Don’t you remember that scene? The collar. Oh my god. 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.” What? Just watch the original please. I’ve been on the ride like 80 times though. You have to watch the original. Why is everybody’s 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 wanna 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 “Jurassic Park.” I’m so down. Get the popcorn, get some chili peppers out. Have you had that like really spicy chip? The Paqui chip? I haven’t, but this one has a story about it if you wanna hear about the Paqui 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 when I was like eight years old for the first time. Oh my god. Horrible. And that is just not a good tasting thing. Oh my god, it’s horrid. I’ve grown outta 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 Paqui One Chip Challenge was gonna 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 pushups, I was drooling outta 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. That’s right. ‘Cause 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 fiancee. 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. Kevin Gates. The chip was trying to tell you something. What? Kevin Gates reference on the podcast. The chip was trying to tell you something. I think it was the universe. 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 like the hot sauce pack from Hot Ones because we wanted to do it ourself. Yeah, yeah. But I don’t know. Did you do a full Hot Ones lineup? You can like get all of the hot sauces. Did you make the wings and do it? No, we want to. We want to. We wanna get some friends that we feel comfortable with like having explosive diarrhea around. Good. And then just like, Who are they? Name them. Shout ’em out. We all got our list of diarrhea friends. Probably her. We actually, we got the same pack and we have all the hot sauces in our fridge, so if you wanna 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. And we put it on a chicken sandwich. It was absolutely delightful, except- Annalise tried it. Devon, it was good, right? 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 plain 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- Sure. You know, trafficked like gold, you know, throughout human history. I didn’t understand it until I was at my best friend Deep’s house. His family’s from Gujarat, and they made Masala chai, or Masala cha as they would call it. Hey, we say cha too. You say cha too? Chai has taken over and it makes me sad. Wait, that’s so fun. Sometimes say cha. Yo, cha gang. Yeah. What do you say? I’ll start. I’ll start. I say chai ’cause 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. We’ll start saying cha. Sometimes I even say chai, and I just I don’t know who I am anymore. Oh, it’s so funny. Yeah, I just say cha. Shout out to Malini Ni for making me Masala cha in the morning in high school. But I drank it. I hadn’t had it in probably 10 years, but I recently visited them for Diwali, and I had a cup of Masala cha 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. Wow. Really? And there’s no chili pepper in it. There’s no capsaicin in what I was experiencing. But what there was was ginger ale and what is it? Piperine. Piperoni. Something like that. No, what is it? Pepperoni. It’s, yeah, but it’s piperine. Piperine. So it’s piperine and ginger ale. 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- Hey, Wilbur. Wilbur. Did he eat a bunch of peppers and then cry? How many tears? Kind of close. Kind of close. He had a bunch of other people do it. But what he did is he- His diarrhea homies? He had his diarrhea homies. We all got ’em. We all got ’em. We all got ’em. Even Wilbur. 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, ’cause 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 yeah, same. Even, I mean peppers. You ever get one of those big jalapenos and you’re just like, “I know this is not gonna be spicy”? I do feel like there is something happening to the jalapenos. They’re getting so bland. They’re like bell peppers now. Mm-hmm. I think there’s some kind of conspiracy. Big jalapeno. Big jalapeno is 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 sambal olek, which made me very sad. There’s sambal olek shortage now. That’s the superior one. I know. This is the problem. But they use red jalapenos in sriracha, and they were using a California farm. Yeah, yeah. 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 is it climate change? Is it, you know, soil being leeched of nutrients. Did they just not diversify their farms enough? But something happened to the jalapenos of that farm. I think that’s- It’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 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 drunk off of tequila and beer. And they’re like, “Why did you bring us here?” I’m like, “I wanna make strawberry shortcake for my birthday.” And then we went to my house and made strawberry shortcake. Do you think the people at Underwood Family Farms enjoyed you doing that? ‘Cause you know it’s for children. 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? 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 a 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 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 make a balm with Sichuan peppercorns? I mean, they literally- B-A-L-M. Have used, yeah. Balm. They are used in medicine. We have to clarify that when there’s brown people in the room. What were you saying about Sichuan 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. Yeah. 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 Sichuan Impression that does incredible Sichuan food. It’s the only menu in the US I’ve seen with bullfrog on it. Oh fun. And 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 cooler cousin. The texture’s a little bit slimier. Is it like chicken with a hint of fish? ‘Cause 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. The little yellow… Buzz buttons. Buzz buttons! Also known as jambu. I don’t know what that is. Both of those, so- Oh my god, they’re so cool. It’s the same chemical compound. The chemical compound is called hydroxy-alpha-sanshool. And it comes from the Zanthoxylum plant. Did you look up every kind of chili? I did. No, I really did. Pretty much. Look at my notes. ‘Cause I was so curious about why we experience 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 it’s subjective. Absolutely. 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 like 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 Zanthoxylum plant which sansho 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%. ‘Cause 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 wanna feel something. But no, I agree. Like- That’s why we eat peppers ’cause we all just wanna feel something. It’s 100% true. You know, it’s that- It distracts you from the fact you’re barreling towards death. Oh yeah. That’s kind of my whole life’s goal. I mean, but 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. ‘Cause we’re all sad. We’re all sad. Moral of the story. Sohla, what do you think happens when you die? Nothing. Yeah. You just go into a hole and it’s done? You don’t even go anywhere. Yeah. You’re just gone. There’s no you, I guess. Just deleted from the earth? It’s just like before you were born. But the after. Oh man. I wanna believe in 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 is, it died. This took a turn. It always does. Goes somewhere. And then there’s mustards, right? People are like, “Mustards are spicy.” Mustards. Mentholy. You know, I watched a video on this, ’cause I do research too, and they said 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 Camel Crush, 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 ’em 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 flaming hot Cheetos exist, and 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 mustards that cause heat, ’cause I copied and pasted it from Wikipedia. Go for it. Allyl isothiocyanate and 4-hydroxybenzyl isothiocyanate. God bless you. That’s not as catchy as capsaicin. Yeah, capsaicin is way better, way better, way better. All right, Sohla 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 ridonculous. I love me some, oke, dude. Dude, I love doing some oke. Does that mean everyone has a casserole? Yes. Yeah, everyone’s got one and they smell like onions is the tagline that we created. Somebody wrote, a fan wrote a full song. He wrote like a full verse. ♪ Opinions are like casserole ♪ ♪ Everyone’s got one and they smell like onions ♪ And then he kept going, which is cool. You should play that. I know. We love finding young talent. We do. Also shout out to the new metal band called Glass Eyes from Minnesota who, 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 gotta eat and we’re all gonna 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 call it like a growl. Okay. Just making sure. And then there’s another one that comes in with a mid scream. So it’s like You know, it kind of hits one of those. I can’t do it good. Sohla can do it. You can do it fine. Sohla, hit her with a mid scream. That was okay. 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! Oh yeah. Play all day! These are so cute. So that’s my scream. Yeah. Aw. Oh, you looked it up immediately. Yeah. Cute. That’s what my brain is filled with now. I love that. I love that. Let’s go to that first opinion. What is up, Josh and Nicole? Travis here. And Sohla. Say hi to Sohla. New York. And my hot food, my hot take is that curry belongs in ramen. I spent some time over in Japan, and there was a place that did like international ramens and whatnot, and there was one that did a… Multiple different kinds of curry ramen. But I love putting any sort of really spicy curry in my ramen. Also, Josh, great Bloody Wood shirt. Oh, let’s go! Bloody Wood is India’s current top metal band and my Gujarati homie, I made him go to the show so he could translate the Hindi. That’s awesome. And he was, yeah, that was a lot about political corruption. That’s really cool. Yeah, great band though. Love me some Bloody Wood. What do you think? Curry in ramen? Yeah, of course. Why not? Why not? Sounds great. Yeah. Noodles, curry, like khao soi. 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… It makes some people mad. The word curry makes people mad. 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! You go to the Caribbean, 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. 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’s a curry technically, but- How do you spell all those? I feel like I always trip up, right? Chili, chili, chilies. Well, like I’ll just say like chile all the time, ’cause I grew up in Southern California. Yeah. And so you will go to 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 chilli crab for instance, you know? But I don’t know. That’s a trip. I’d say C-H-I-L-L-Y is all encompassing for all of ’em. 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 11:54 AM, 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 kare-kare. Oh yeah, I made kare-kare ramen one time. You made kare-kare ramen. With peanut butter and the shrimp paste. It was pretty sexy. That was so good. That was sexy too. It was pretty sexy. But I think right now Japanese curry’s 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. Interesting. And like you exclusively call it that. So that’s what I love about the nuances of food, right? 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. Hey. From Massachusetts. What’s up? Just wanna say I love the voicemail. It’s so sultry. Is he walking up the stairs? 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, you know, hip, and they’re trying to be bold, adventurous. Hmm. Oh. Oh, that’s a hot take. That’s a very hot take. I mean, I like hot sauce. I’m not trying to be bold. I’m the least bold person there is. No, I think every hot sauce is different. Some are just gonna slam you in the face, you know, like Da Bomb. 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 gonna 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- Just thick. Red Rooster hot sauce. You know, 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. At 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 like American like lexicon of food. So we substitute it with spice plus vinegar plus salt. So just put more vinegar in your food. Vinegar’s delicious. Yeah, you want acid. Acid is good, and it’s a very important part of food. So I understand a little bit. A little bit. Do love hot sauce though. Put more sumac on it. Sure. Put more sumac on stuff. Life’s short. Put sumac on it. Hello. Love the pod. My name is Lauren. I’m from Pennsylvania outside of Philly. Go Birds. Go Birds. I actually went to school in Bethlehem, Josh. So like loving all the PA references. My hot take- I wonder if she went to Lehigh? That spicy food challenges like BDubs Blazin’ Wings challenge, stuff like that is only perpetuating toxic masculinity. Oh my god. 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. I think my uncle used to teach there, so- Wow. Shout out to Lancaster Valley. Toxic masculinity. Sohla? Oh, I completely agree. Yeah, yeah. Tough to disagree. That’s the only reason that those, like that Paqui 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 that. 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. Sure. I grew up sports were 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 Paqui chips? Trauma bonds over Paqui chips. Misery loves company. But I do… There’s still times when I really love chasing that spicy high, and it’s not through stuff like Paqui chips, but my favorite som tam spot, Thai papaya salad, or, well actually it’s som tam 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. Yum. Som tam challenge like 12 years in a row. Incredible. They 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 the 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 kind of? It’s a double talk word. Don’t remember it. Dang. That’s a bummer. But anyway, so I do still like getting that. But yeah, it is rooted in toxic masculinity. It’s the same reason that 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 or like super spicy ones, I don’t think anybody’s doing it ’cause 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, “Mm, this is a delicious, I don’t know, “10 pound pastrami burger.” No one’s doing it ’cause they’re like, “Yum. Mm.” They’re doing it to test their physical limits always. So at El Tepeyac in East LA, I did their Manuel special challenge. This is a six pound burrito. Also happens to be very delicious. But I did it with a former NFL player, Christian Yount, and he didn’t finish it, and I finished it in under 10 minutes. I have done the blazin’ challenge at Buffalo Wild Wings. Okay. Smoked it. But as a male hubris coming back to bite me, I didn’t wash my hands ’cause I was- Oy-yoy-yoy. Capsaicin entered into the porousness of my fingers, and I had to soak my hands in ice water to go to sleep that night. Oh my gosh. And also, Sohla, I don’t know if you know this, you’re kinda sitting with a celebrity here, former Guinness Guinness World record holder for most baby food eaten in one minute. That’s right. 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 like makes you feel better about your penis, just do it. That’s right. And it does. Klom klom. Klom klom is the term. Oh, I don’t know that term. I love that. Yeah, and it’s how I like to cook. You know, it’s you balance but you don’t- Take it all the way up. Stay in stasis. You balance up the ladder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep going, baby. Klom klom your way to the top. We got time for one more? 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. This one is pretty spicy for a hot food take because I am 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, and eat 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 is not pizza. It’s an unleavened dough. Uh-huh. So it’s like a matza. It’s just rolled out and then baked super crispy, and then they put a delicious processed cheese called provel 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. Fair enough. You know, I’m gonna give it one shot, and I’m not opposed to processed cheese in the right context. Me neither, yeah. 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 the, I need the chew. Pizza, the chew is intrinsic to me. Ah, you don’t need it. I like believe in 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 get a tortilla, put it in a cast iron skillet. It’s not bad. Yeah. I agree. I agree with you. It’s not bad at all. I agree. Hot sauce and bread? It’s fine. Do it. Yeah. Whatever makes you happy. You know, that’s my thought. I love that. Sometime I just like in the middle of the night, I just need like a hi of savory, and I’ll have a spoonful of nutritional yeast with soy sauce, and it’s so weird. Yum. No. It like hits the spot. I love nutch. Sometimes I like lick my finger ’cause it’s my nutch ’cause my husband doesn’t. And 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. Delicious. But hot sauce and bread, no. Why? 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 do that. 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. Hot sauce and mayonnaise. No, not another condiment. On bread. Not another… Not another condiment. Like, something else. One thing. I don’t know what it is. A pad of butter would suffice for me. A hot sauce sandwich does feel like something from the Great Depression. Yeah. Two slices of white bread. I can’t condone it. To stimulate like factory workers. You know, make you work faster. It’s like packing a zit. 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, like that’s probably where he got it from. Okay, fine. 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. I remember that story. 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 the white guy in the group. That feels very white. Thank you. Just slice of bread and mayonnaise. I am expressing my culture. This is how I connect to my ancestors. No, you know, 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. She was probably white. I don’t remember. Was she white? 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 Datil pepper sauce. Do you 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 had that like, use 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 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 rice. Ugh. Iconic. I’m three years late to that. Anyways, on that note, Sohla, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Yeah, you were great. Absolutely. Tell the people where they can find you. Oh, please buy my book if you wanna learn how to cook or if you know how to cook and you just wanna 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 her 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 wanna be featured on “Opinions Are Like Casseroles,” you can give us a call at 833-DOG-POD1. See you all next time. Bye!