A few years ago, while scrolling through YouTube to pass a slow hour, the algorithm brought me to an interview with a (at that cultural moment) celebrity eating extremely hot wings. I didn't watch the whole thing. The extremity of the actor's agony was almost too much to bear.
This snippet of video returned to me with volcanic force when our youngest, Evan, announced that he would be participating in a hot wings eating contest. This local challenge was based on the YouTube channel called Hot Ones, where, a celebrity is invited to eat 10 successively hotter sauces slathered on chicken wings while the host does the same. The host asks increasingly personal questions as the heat rises. This is the video I stumbled on years ago and Evan maintains that it is quite entertaining.
Our local brewpub, Four Saints Brewing Company, created a small-town offering for this very hot take on celebrity interviewing. Evan was part of the last panel to be willingly scorched. It was a spectacle to be sure and I will not soon forget the pride that I and his mother felt as he put his digestion to the test.
If you don't know anything about hot peppers or the sauces they make with them, I can get you pretty warm on the subject. Peppers produce a protective oil called capsaicin. This is what gives them their spiciness. Different breeds of peppers have different heat. Rating this spiciness is accomplished through the Scofield system, where a number is attached to each type of pepper. The higher the Scofield number, the higher the heat. Talented chefs produce sauces with these peppers and some people decide to eat them slathered on wings.
Evan's event began at about 6,000 Scofield; roughly equivalent to a basic hot sauce, like Franks or Texas Pete. The final sauce is so hot that it doesn't even rate on the scale: close to one million Scofield he guessed through streaming eyes and flaming red cheeks. The intervening sauces burn hotter and hotter.
To give us some context, the night before the event, as we were gathered in our kitchen for homemade pizza night, he brought a sauce for us to try. Scorpion Sauce has a Scofield number of about 57,000. Each of us put a tiny red dot on a saltine and we were quickly gasping and sweating. Though I liked the flavor and the heat, it immediately made me realize just how unprepared I would be for the Hot Ones competition. Evan, however, had been doing his homework.
The point of this test of endurance is to get to the final sauce without taking a sip of water. If you don't drink, you will be entered into a raffle. Of course, to burn one's mucous membranes to a cinder is a joy in itself apparently for the people who participate. These fearless pepper fiends lovingly refer to themselves as "heatonists".
Heatonists evidently get some sense of pride from wading into the raging misery of capsaicin blasted lips and tongues and coming away unblinking—or, at least without sipping their drink.
The pepper's cleverly evolved capsaicin oils begin to produce—as one nears the final sauce—an entertaining physiological reaction. The nose begins to run. The salivary glands flush the mouth, eyes water, ears may tingle or buzz. With each commensurate increase in heat, though, the body begins to descend into a primitive emergency reaction. The adrenal glands secrete pure liquid fight-or-flight into the bloodstream. Heart rates increase. Eyes dilate. The extremities begin to tingle. The mind dials down to a level of concentration that filters out extraneous noise. This is why the host asked trivia questions of the panel: it's hard to access that level of minutiae when your body thinks it's being poisoned.
Eventually, things get so bad that the symptoms cannot be managed. The pain and the numbness and the sweat and the urge to wipe your eyes (don't you dare!) is so strong it becomes nearly impossible to function. After the final bite, the swell of heat leaves the contestants flushed, blinking, making big "O's" with their mouths as the body tries and fails to make the pain stop. Looking for all the world like they have been sprayed with police-issue mace (also made with capsaicin), they all get their medals, and shakily return to the audience. Evan, who had the forethought to purchase a liter of whole milk, snatched it from the bar fridge and began sipping immediately.
Luckily, Evan says, the decay is pretty short. The pepper burns hot but not for long. I'm sure with that level of heat—like putting a lit sparkler on the tongue—anything of greater duration than a second is hell. He told us this as he sipped his chilled whole milk and gasped and writhed in his seat. He described the somewhat worrying sensation in his hands as if he had been sitting on them and they lost circulation.
Ever the foodie, Evan not only did pretty well on the trivia, he also gave his opinion about the flavors of each sauce, while he could still taste anything or speak coherently.
Having tasted the Scorpion Sauce, I doubt any of the rest of our family would rashly jump into such a competition. If it were for a million dollars and I could use some of the cash to be treated at the ER, then I might do it. One thing I will say about Evan, if eating hot stuff is bravery, then he's one courageous heatonist.
The next day he told me that in the middle of the night, his body's final response to the peppers and sauces was as one might suspect. Proof positive to me that I'll enjoy the nutritional and immune benefits of eating reasonably hot peppers and sauces, but will likely not push the envelope by enrolling myself in the blazing echelons of the heatonists.
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