Now and then, I drop a reference to some ‘new’ food product which isn’t really new – just a new mash-up of old components. Now, it seems that the tired old trend for spicy foods is getting recycled, again, with even nuttier pairings of flavours…
Baskin Robbins’ newest: Spicy ‘N Spooky ice cream…
“Spicy is good. Spicy works…”
In the beginning, it made some kind of sense. The initial explosion of Tex-Mex into the Fast Food and Snacks mainstream a few years ago took the convenience foods world by storm. Just add chili pepper to foods that already had big doses of salt and fat. Chips, puffs, pretzels; Fast Food menu items. And, by all means, offer a huge variety of sauces and seasoning blends so folks can add ‘spicy’ to whatever they may be inspired to ‘zip-up’.
And, sure as we’re all hard-wired to crave the foods that are nutritionally worst for us, folks ate it up.
But what do you do to follow up such a tectonic upheaval in the munchable universe?
Stretching the envelope
That’s when the brain trusts behind product development and marketing at the giant processed food makers began poking at ‘the envelope’.
And thereafter followed a persistent, creeping exploratory push to insinuate ‘spicy’ into a number of areas where it wasn’t necessarily traditional. This aside from the natural rush to bring to the foreground in the western hemisphere stuff like hot wings and Asian specialties that were traditionally hot but theretofore unknown. Witness the rise of Sichuan cuisine, Kim Chi, Sriracha Sauce, and legions of ‘new’, previously unknown (or even dreamed of) hot pepper sauces.
Breaking bad…
It was inevitable that the envelope should burst at some point. Pairings of ‘spicy’ with foods most folks would consider highly unlikely partners would be attempted. I’ve previously characterized this phase in the evolution of the spicy movement the ‘We need to do something new. This is something. Okay, let’s do it!” era.
Herein erupted a different kind of pro0motional hype for ‘spicy’ than it had received before. Spicy ‘challenges’ appeared, in which diners were exhorted to eat stuff so hot it sent many would-be contestants to hospital.
On another vector, plant breeders started up programs to go where no natural varietal crosses had gone before. People like Steamin’ Ed Currie of Rock Hill, South Carolina regularly announced the advent of new hot peppers until it became a kind of culinary arms race.
Volcanic heat
By the mid 20-teens, cultured hot peppers had come out with heat levels verging on the volcanic.
Currie started it all with the Carolina Reaper, certified as the world’s hottest chili pepper by Guinness World Records at 1,641,183 Scoville Heat Units (SHU). In May 2017, Welsh breeder Mike Smith of St. Asaph claimed to have surpassed the Carolina Reaper with his Dragon’s Breath pepper, at 2.4 million SHUs. Smith applied to Guinness World Records for confirmation. However, just 4 months later, before certification could be confirmed, Currie came back with an even stronger pepper known as Pepper X at 3.18 million SHUs.
So it has gone since then, with at least one new ‘hottest’ pepper débuting every year.The upper limits of chili pepper heat have exceeded the credibly edible.
So, what NOW?
Back to basics.
While the chemical companies tinker with weaponizing the ever-hotter pepper breeds for police sand military use, food processors have taken a sideways bounce to Absurdville. In the same recent week:
Baskin Robbins introduced Spicy ‘n Spooky, described as, “a bold and intense new ice cream […] a first of its kind for Baskin-Robbins, […] the brand’s spiciest flavor yet.”
Shake Shack has dosed its ‘Classics’ (Beef Burgers, Chicken Sandwiches, and Cheese Fries) what it bills as it’s hottest pepper sauce yet, made with a new pepper from Ed Currie, The Last Dab: Apollo, described as, “the first of its kind and the hottest sauce to date available at Shake Shack.”
And Roasty Buds Coffee Company – an online supplier of coffee novelties – has unveiled what it calls, “the world’s spiciest coffee” – “XXXtra Insane Spicy made with the infamous Carolina Reaper and Pumpkin Spice.”
And there, BTW, is that fall must-have flavour Pumpkin Spice, just because everybody feels they have to have a PC option on their Fall menus.
The old Merry-Go-Round
I guess it’s time for another ride on the Hot Pepper Merry-Go-Round. Too bad, but it seems the processed food purveyors have burned out on the hot pepper phenomenon. Time for something really new and exciting!
~ Maggie J.