Hello!
Today we will introduce you to chili pepper, one of the most controversial ingredients
in cooking.
Someone cannot live without it, and someone promises to try it at least once in their
life.
From the point of view of the benefits and chemical composition of the product, pepper
is a real storehouse of useful nutrients that must be found in the diet of a healthy person.
Meanwhile, there are a number of contraindications to the use of chili.
Today we will tell you whether pepper is so useful, whether it can drastically affect
health, and who definitely should not get involved in a spicy product.
Today, about 30 varieties of chili pepper are known in the world, which is a hot and
pungent vegetable used in cooking mainly for the preparation of various spices and seasonings.
Chili pepper was brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus along with tobacco, beans and other
vegetables.
And this type of pepper is not called at all in honor of the country of Chile, it’s just
that in the Aztec language the word “chilli”, from which the name of the vegetable arose,
means “red”.
Chili is an ingredient that is available only to healthy people and only in small quantities.
Thrill-seekers should understand that excessive consumption of such an active product will
sooner or later lead to disruption of the functionality of the gastrointestinal tract.
Today, chili pepper is recognized as a very popular seasoning.
It is also called hot pepper, capsicum, red, bitter.
Dried and ground chili peppers are called cayenne, a Turkish vegetable.
This product is not always red.
Its sharpness depends on the stage of maturity and variety.
But in any case, it is quite tasty and very healthy culture.
The main biologically active substance of chili is capsaicin.
That's what gives it a spicy taste.
In addition to capsaicin, the vegetable is rich in vitamins B, K, PP, C and A. It also
contains beta-carotene.
There are also minerals.
For example, potassium and iron, phosphorus and magnesium, copper and manganese, zinc
and selenium, calcium and sodium.
Such a rich composition has a beneficial effect on all human systems and organs.
In addition, the product is low in calories.
There are only 40 kilocalories in 100 grams.
Therefore, it can be safely included in the diet during the diet.
Chili can bring a lot of benefits - it's not for nothing that famous chefs are so fond
of adding it to their dishes.
By the way, red hot pepper contains endorphins - “happiness hormones”.
It is they who cause the desire to eat the product again and again, despite its spiciness.
During the use of chili peppers, a person’s pulse and heart rate quicken, the pupils dilate,
and endorphins, pleasure hormones, are produced in the body.
Since they are opiates, there is a feeling of euphoria.
It is for this reason that some people are truly addicted to spicy foods.
It is necessary to clean the pepper from seeds, as it is believed that most of it is in the
seeds.
In fact, the capsaicin maximum contains a porous white layer inside the pepper.
It is he who creates the notorious peppery heat and makes a person rush from one glass
of ice water to another.
But one should not be afraid that peeled peppers will lose their piquancy and pungency.
On the contrary, it will make you feel the most open and organic flavor palette.
The Scoville scale was named after the American chemist Wilbur Scoville, who invented it in
1912.
Surprisingly, he was not a cook, but a pharmacist.
He came up with a very simple way to measure the spiciness of a pepper, based on a person's
ability to perceive a hot taste.
The units of measurement are parts of water with sugar, which must be added to the same
part of chili pepper so that the taster does not feel any heat in the mouth at all.
For example, one part of crushed Poblano pepper will require about 1500 parts of water for
a person to not notice its presence in the solution at all.
Initially, Scoville ground various peppers and mixed them with sugar water and then tested
them with a group of tasters who slowly sipped these solutions.
He then diluted the solutions little by little until they no longer burned the tongues of
the tasters, after which he assigned a number to each of the peppers based on the number
of dilutions needed to "kill" its heat.
What exactly does this scale measure?
The concentration of "capsaicin" - the active ingredient that causes a feeling of warmth
on our tongues.
The measurements themselves are divided into multiples of hundreds.
Note that one part per 1,000,000 dilutions of water is worth 1.5 Scoville units.
Pure capsaicin, the substance that makes peppers so hot, is rated between 0 and 16,000,000
Scoville units.
Sweet bell pepper is considered to be zero, since it is not spicy at all.
Capsicum pepperoni 100-500 units, Anaheim pepper - 500-1000 units.
These are the three softest peppers.
Starting with Rocotillo peppers - 1500-2500 units, the scale moves from "soft" and "warm"
to "hot" varieties.
It is slightly sweet in taste and has a pleasant fruity aroma.
Starting from the mark of one hundred thousand units, all peppers are characterized as "explosive".
And this “elite” group opens with a pepper from Jamaica, Jamaican hot pepper.
Pepper Scorpion Trinidad - 1,200,000-2,000,000 units.
Next to him, gardeners are forced to wear gas masks and protective suits.
On the small island of Trinidad, it is part of the tear gas.
Carolina Reaper - 1,500,000-2,300,000 units.
It's hard to believe, but the most desperate guys compete in the speed of eating this fiery
vegetable, and in 2016, a native of Jamaica named Wayne Algenio managed to eat as many
as 22 peppers in a minute, whose total weight was almost 120 grams.
It is strongly not recommended to try to repeat after him, because you can arrange wild stress
for your body, which is still unknown how it will end.
The heartbeat will become more frequent, the temperature will rise, there will be a severe
headache and acute pain in the stomach, which then will have to be treated for a very long
time.
Dragon Breath - 2,500,000 units.
This pepper, named after the Welsh dragon, is officially the hottest, and experts strongly
advise daredevils not to swallow it whole, as it can be fatal from suffocation or anaphylactic
shock.
The maximum indicator is unbearably sharp.
By the way, capsaicin is used in medicine, as part of plasters, tinctures and ointments
from frostbite.
However, Scoville's research method had obvious shortcomings.
For example, imagine that you need to determine the spiciness level of a caroline pepper.
To do this, it will have to be diluted 2 million times and let five test subjects try.
This can take a week of tests, not to mention the subjectivity of the assessment.
Therefore, today testing the spiciness of peppers is not as subjective as it was a hundred
years ago.
The Scoville test has been replaced by high performance liquid chromatography, which measures
the heat-generating chemicals in peppers and rates them in ASTA units of heat.
Among hot peppers, one of the first places on the Scoville scale is occupied by a pepper
from Japan - Takanotsume.
It is also called, Hawk Claw and Cock Spur.
Originally bred in the United States, this high-yielding vegetable has spread widely
throughout the world.
This type of pepper is relatively rare in Japan because most of the peppers sold in
this country are grown overseas.
Now it is the main dish of Japanese cuisine.
This pepper gets its name from its claw-like shape.
Pods grown from seeds mature from green to red in 85 days.
The hawkclaw chili grows upright on dense bushes reaching a height of about sixty centimeters.
Ripe red peppers are usually dried and used to season a variety of dishes.
Takanotsume is prized for its distinctly rich aroma, flavor and unsurpassed spiciness.
Agrotechnical methods of growing chili peppers are practically no different from sweet pepper
varieties.
It is also sown on seedlings, dived, hardened, and only with full confidence that there are
no return frosts and the plants reach 10–15 cm in height, this is about two months after
sowing the seeds, they are planted in open ground.
Outdoors, Hawkclaw Peppers need well-drained soil and a minimum of six hours of sunlight
per day.
The only and main feature of chili care is its tendency to form a powerful bush and continuous
flowering.
Based on these morphological qualities, plants can be helped in formation by pinching the
apical buds and removing excess flowers.
The first technique allows you to increase the decorativeness of the bush, the second
- the size and quality of the fruit.
You should regularly water the plant, but do not overdo it, as excess water causes mold,
rot and other diseases.
It is worth knowing that all hot peppers are responsive to fertilizers.
For this reason, it is good to grow them in pre-manured beds or feed them weekly from
the moment the first fruits are formed with ash, or any other top dressing used for tomatoes.
Generally, chili peppers grow best when the soil is slightly dry and a thick layer of
mulch will suppress weeds and retain moisture.
A feature of chili is the gradual ripening of the crop.
But this is also its advantage, because the fruits of this pepper can be consumed both
fully ripened and unripe.
At the same time, the more ripe the peppers, the more burning their taste and the more
sweetness they have.
Closer to autumn, the collection of chili peppers is recommended to be done in an unripe
form.
This will not particularly affect the quality of the crop, the peppercorns will ripen at
home, but the plants will be able to form an additional crop.
Chili peppers are used in several forms: dried, dried and fresh.
If everything is clear with fresh, then a few words can be said about the rest.
First, there are the spices.
Usually they are a mixture of spices that not only complement each other in terms of
taste, but also enhance the aroma and promote better absorption.
Secondly, simply ground chili pepper is widely used in cooking.
It is added to salads, sauces, stews, broths.
In addition, chili is great for pickling, it enhances the taste of soups, borscht, put
in pizza.
It is also suitable for freezing, however, before placing it in the freezer, the pods
are kept for three minutes in boiling water or lightly fried.
This product is also good in dried form.
Hanging by the ponytails, it not only retains its beneficial properties throughout the winter
season, but is also an excellent decoration for the kitchen.
There are people for whom hot peppers in a dish can ruin their entire appetite, there
are those who deliberately add spicy peppers to their dishes, and there is a completely
different category of people, these are those who take part in competitions in the southern
province of China Hunan eating hot peppers.
Such a spectacle is truly not for the faint of heart, and there is no need to even talk
about participation.
Competitions take place in early July, when the temperature in this area reaches 40 degrees
Celsius, and even the humidity is high.
Competitors plunge into the pepper literally to the very throat, and eat, and eat it tirelessly.
Each contestant is given a plate of 50 peppercorns, which they must eat in 60 seconds.
Last year, the hot pepper-eating winner was able to eat 15 peppercorns in a minute.
The current winner swallowed all 50 at once!
The conditions of the competition are such that the participants must not only eat peppercorns
at speed, but at the same time they must also sit in water with pepper, which also “gives
heat” to the contestants in its own way.
These peppercorns, of course, are not as spicy as those that the contestants have to eat,
as doctors are afraid that too hot pepper in water can severely burn the skin.
Several participants could not stand it, because in the 40-degree heat, and even with hot pepper
in their mouths, they simply found themselves on the verge of fainting.
Water from the pool also does not help much - after contact with pepper, it also acquires
a slight bitterness, so some participants took a half-liter bottle of ordinary water
with them.
According to other conditions of the competition, the participants had to eat peppers and at
the same time sit in a bathtub filled with hot water and pepper.
It's still
a pleasure.
However, 10 people “subscribed” to it.
Yi Huang, a 20-year-old girl who ate 20 spicy pods in a minute, won.
She was given the title of "Queen of Chili" and
presented with a gold bar weighing 10 grams.