Today's award goes to a hot-to-trot (so to speak) eater in England.
A man was rushed to hospital, suffering from severe stomach pains, after eating three chicken wings doused in sauce made from what is thought to be the world's hottest chili pepper.
Mark McNeil, 36, was hoping to be able to eat ten of the chicken wings to win a competition.
. . .
The pepper in the sauce is the Carolina Reaper chilli which rates between 1.5m and 2.2m on the Scoville heat unit scale.
This makes the pepper the hottest in the world.
The challenge which caused him the pain is to eat ten of the spicy wings in ten minutes - then you are not allowed to drink for five minutes.
Winners get a full £9.95 refund - but no one has yet managed to receive that lavish prize.
The challenge was launched on Tuesday this week, and not one person has managed to choke down more than three of the wings.
. . .
Mr McNeil said: “The first wing went down okay, a bit tingling. I had another two and it was just overwhelming. A burning sensation. I had loads of milk and ate loads of cucumbers, tomatoes, anything to dull the pain.
"After about an hour and a half the pain was too much. I had to leave work early and go to hospital. The staff were very professional but I could tell they were kind of joking as well when I told them."
There's more at the link.
Here's a hint: When the restaurant insists you sign a waiver, absolving them of all responsibility, before they'll let you even order the dish, let alone taste it . . . maybe - just maybe - you might want to think about why they'd regard that as necessary!
Peter
Dare to be stupid.
ReplyDeleteThe Brobdingnagian idiocy of eating anything a great deal hotter than Tobasco sauce never ceases to amaze me. It's not as if there's any real FLAVOR involved. It's becoming the Western equivalent of eating Fugu.
ReplyDeleteWhy not go play on the freeway? It'll probably hurt less.....
There's a difference between "hotter than most people like" and "too hot to enjoy." I routinely eat things a great deal hotter than Tabasco sauce - because I like the taste, and I *can* distinguish the flavors.
ReplyDeleteThere's a place in San Francisco that sells freshly made potato chips with Ghost Peppers - when we're visiting, my wife and I sometimes buy and split a small bag. Granted, a small bag is about all we want - but we *do* enjoy it, and *can* taste flavors other than "hot". And we use & enjoy habaneros in our home cooking (about one habanero per large pot of whatever works for us).
But there are some sauces we don't use specifically because they are too hot for us to enjoy, because they don't have any flavor we can detect, or both. "Know your limits" and "don't be an idiot" cover most situations, I think.
As always, the toxicity is in the dose.
ReplyDeleteI have a bottle of Clark's Caribbean Seven sauce, which is also made with Carolina Reapers -- but I suspect it's not nearly as overpowered as what this poor knucklehead was ingesting. Mine's got a nice sweet start before the heat kicks in, but it's not 'oh god the burning' by any stretch; I've put it on a number of things with good results.