The spicy food industry has exploded since the 1980s, moving beyond Tabasco and the odd chili cookoff.
For those of us obsessed with spicy food, it can be hard to find the best of the best. It’s a delicate balance to find food that brings the deliciousness as well as the searing pain.
That’s where Mark Masker and the Burn! Blog come in.
Mark Masker is the acting editor of the Burn! Blog, the “irreverent sibling” to The Pope Of Peppers, Dave DeWitt’s Fiery Foods and Barbecue Super Site, as you’ll find out below.
Masker and Dewitt are, quite simply, masters of tearjerking, face-burning cuisine. He took a moment to tell us about the beginnings of the blog, and also shared some tips on how to select the perfect spiciness no matter what your pain threshold.
How did Burn! Blog get started? What did you feel was lacking in other food blogs that inspired you to start your own website?
Dave DeWitt, The Pope of Peppers, started Burn! Blog to pull viewers to his Fiery Foods and Barbecue Super Site and make his presence felt in the blogging world. He’s one of the foremost chile pepper/hot sauce authorities on this planet (and probably the rest of them also). Burn! Blog is the Super Site’s irreverent sibling, focused as much on being fun as being informative.
Who is your main audience, and how are their specific needs met by Burn! Blog?
Anyone who loves chile peppers, spice, and barbecue, but who also has a sense of humor. We run a mixture of traditional articles, fun factoids, news (both weird and informative), event coverage, recipes, and how-tos – most with a humorous bent.
Your partner, Dave DeWitt, has the title “The Pope Of Peppers.” How did he get that name? What does being The Pope Of Peppers entail?
The New York Times bequeathed it to him several years after one of his books, A World of Curries, was nominated for a James Beard award in 1995. He’d worked his ass off earning that moniker, too. Not only has he written scores of books on peppers, food history, and more; he founded Chile Pepper Magazine in 1987, and his National Fiery Foods and Barbecue Show turns 27 years old in March. The event draws 20,000 people. Dave is also the man behind the Scovie Awards.
I don’t know what being the Pope of Peppers entails, but I can tell you what it doesn’t: wearing phallic hats. You’ll never catch Dave Dewitt in anything looking like a traditional pope hat. Just try keeping him out of a shirt covered in peppers, though.
What’s the hottest thing you’ve ever eaten?
Ed Currie’s Carolina Reaper superhot pepper. Ed fed me one at the National Fiery Foods and Barbecue Show two years ago when he was applying for the Guinness Book of World Records for world’s hottest chile pepper. He eventually won with the Reaper, at 2.2 million Scoville Heat Units. By comparison, your average habanero clocks in at 100,000-600,000 Scoville. Needless to say, I set a land speed record making my way to the free ice cream booth twenty minutes later.
Can you give a brief overview of the Scoville Scale? How can someone using this rating to decide what flavors right for them?
It’s a system for measuring capsicum heat in peppers and some chemicals, basically. When Wilbur Scoville created the Scoville Heat Unit in 1912, it was basically a taste test. Now, High Performance Liquid Chromatography is used to determine parts per million of capsaicin, which is then converted into Scoville Heat Units. Pure capsaicin, a crystalline alkaloid, is 16 million SHU (Scoville Heat Units). Jalapeno peppers usually range from 1000 to 4000 SHU, while the big bad superhot chiles start at 855,000 SHU. Using the scale to determine flavor is a matter of IF you want flavor, not WHAT flavor. The higher the SHU, the more it’s going to overpower the flavor of the pepper in question. Go high enough on the scale, and you get a tiny bit of pepper flavor for a half a second eclipsed by searing mouth lava. At least, that’s what I’ve found.
What are a few of your favorite spicy peppers? Where could someone go about finding them, either online or in their neighborhood?
I like habaneros because they have this nectarine-esque tone to their flavor. I live in Southern California, so I just get them at the grocery store or grow them. They’ve become pretty mainstream. If you can’t find them at your supermarket, look for them at a latino grocery store. If you want ghost peppers or other superhots, you can sometimes find them at farmers’ markets or buy them online, or buy the seeds and try to grow them. Our Super Site has lots of information on growing peppers of all kinds.
Burn! Blog explores the cuisine of exotic locations. What have been some memorable places that you’ve written about? Where does your favorite spicy food come from?
Dave actually gets to do most of the exotic travel stuff. For me, my favorite spicy food is Szechuan tea-smoked pork or duck. I started tea smoking the stuff in my smoker at home and I love it.
You also write about spicy cocktails, beer, and wine. What have been some of your favorites that you’ve come across? Have you had any regrettable experiences?
Greg Mays is our cocktail editor, and he does a wonderful job concocting drinks for his reviews. I’ve also found CaJohn’s Frostbite makes a wonderful general hot sauce for drinks. It’s not tomato-based. That gives it great versatility. I use it in my orange tea hot toddy and my raspberry chocolate red wine frappe. Regrettable experiences? Oh, yeah. That idea I had for the green St. Pat’s Bloody Mary last year was about as well thought out as Kanye West’s Grammy antics. The hot sauce I used was too sweet for use with tomatillos.
What advice do you have for people who want heat, but don’t want to sacrifice flavor?
The simplest approach is to find a hot sauce you like and stick with it. Maybe keep a selection of hot sauces for various types of dishes. There’s been a gourmet hot sauce revolution.
I’ve always heard that bases are the best cure for spicy food. If you’ve gotten in over your head, what are some top antidotes for spiciness?
In my opinion, milk fat is the best salve for that. I’ve also heard the acid in tomatoes can counteract capsaicin, which is an alkaloid – although I’ve never tried that.
Curry is very different from wasabi, which is very different from habaneros. Could you give us an overview of some of the different types of spicy out there?
Wow, well, to keep it straightfoward, we’ll confine it to families of spicy. If you’re into Hungarian flavors, try a good imported Hungarian paprika-like Szeged. Wasabi and horseradish are both member of the Brassicaceae family (as are mustard and cabbage). The heat in both is more reminiscent of a hot mustard than a chile pepper such as jalapeno or habanero.
Curry powder and curry are two different animals. The powder was allegedly invented by Indian merchants to sell to British people returning home after serving in India during Britain’s empire phase. Curry itself is a range of Southern Asian and Southeast Asian dishes that commonly has coriander, turmeric, and cumin in it. It can be served either wet as a sauce or dry.
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