Here in France it seems the lowest level contains a truly homeopathic level of spice 😂
Brits fall into one of two categories:
-
as described above. "This mayonnaise is rather piquant for my tastes"
-
grins maniacally while they empty a bottle of their homemade Carolina reaper sauce over their vindaloo/phall/magmaloo.
I don’t know, my mom brought me some Carolina reaper sauce from the UK a couple years ago. It was pretty good, but it was not the reaper level I was used to. I kinda loved it since I could eat it by the tablespoon and feel tough as nails.
Update- for the record, the ingredient label of it read “Carolina reaper paste, salt”.
I use bout 10-15 Carolina reapers for a 250 ml bottle. The other ingredients are decided based on what I fancy at the time. My current one is milder because the most aggressive thing they had at the import shop was habanero. I used a combination of stewed onion, apples and dates as the base with cider vinegar and Christmas spices. It's kinda like hp with a bit of a kick. Pleasant but not very spicy.
Thank god somebody can articulate it! I hate being lumped in with the 'noooo, lemon and herb Nandos is too spicy' crowd. I just had the last of my Wiltshire Chilli Farm "Fatalii" hot sauce on my dinner, very nice sauce.
Anyone who thinks Brits don't like spicy food has never set foot in a British takeaway
Oh, my. That steamed carrot was a bit spicy for me.
I’ll have one bowl of mild farina
At some point the spice goes negative and now you owe them spice.
The spice must flow
In my time I've had a few phaal curries that have definitely 'flowed' the next day.
On the plus side I always felt really energised after.
I had one when I went home for Christmas a couple of years ago and it was very disappointing in terms of the spice level. I had high hopes after the waiter told me to store my bog roll in the freezer.
That is legitimately surprising considering how popular Indian food has been with the few Brits I know.
I've never actually seen or heard of this in the UK. It could well be real, but it's not that common. Most people I know have reasonable spice tolerance given as you say the popularity of Indian food there.
Indian is spicy in that it uses lots of spices. It doesnt rank real high on the spice meter imo. Even the “ghost pepper vindaloo” at a specialty hot Indian place near me doesn’t rate much more than 3/5 and that’s the hottest Indian I’ve found. Everything else at the many Indian places I’ve been only reaches maybe a 1.5. I grow ghost peppers annd I don’t think they really use em. Any Thai or Burmese places “white people spicy” is about the same.
I think you guys get different Indian food than we do. I've had stuff that would peel paint off a car.
Can confirm. As someone who has a high spice tolerance, when I order spicy, I tell them to not hold back, and sometimes they still do, thinking I can't handle it. But when I went to England, that request was a whole other realm of pain. No regrets, I asked for it, I cried my tears, and teared my crungus, but man, I was not expecting it.
Same.
It must be made differently across the pond. I've felt like I was gonna bleed from my eyeballs once or twice from Indian food. Way hotter than any Mexican food I've ever had and I'm in an area with a lot of first generation immigrants cooking...
Lived in Southern China for a while. I've also had plenty of authentic thai, Indian, central American. The dal bhat my sister made after living in Nepal was a burning I will never forget. Ever.
I’ve never had a spicy Indian dish in my life in Australia. I usually go with Szechuan food if I want something spicy from a shop.
South Indian food is quite spicy. Most typically the Indian food you find in different place is Northern Indian. I recommend trying to find some!
Yea this sounds like a local you thing. The indian near me has me literally sweating at "white people spicy." I tried "indian spicy" when i went with my indian friends, and i could barely finish it.
I've been meaning to learn how to say "fuck me up with spice" in Thai for this reason. Or ordering takeout under a native name.
A common trick is to order it "Thai spicy". Obviously YMMV.
Thai/Native Hot is usually the highest on the menu and what I generally order. Some places will happily fuck me up but others don't, especially when I (infrequently) order takeout and can't reassure them beforehand. That said, I have a very high capsaicin tolerance so may need to just settle for doing it myself.
Yeah there was a Thai place in Trondheim that had that as an option, but where I live now the local Thai place refuses to do it.
“Ala, why don't you have バタ臭いrads?”
Exhibit A:

I speak both of the languages in this comment and am still confused.
Why I don't have weak-to-spice [com]rad[e]s?
In Albania if a dish has black pepper it's labeled spicy. I picked up a jar of tikka sauce that had 3 peppers on it, was labeled medium, and it was sweet. Absolutely 0 spice.
In Finland in the 90s you couldn't even buy garlic. My old Finnish Grandpa would get totally red in the face from eating burger king because it would have a tiny amount of black pepper. It's better nowadays though
It's not as bad in Austria, but definitely all products made for Austrian market labeled as spicy you bet your ass there's no hotness at all.
i have never seen extra mild in my life
Is it ketchup?
Nah, too spicy
I've recently been experiencing regular nausea and complained to my wife about Pepto Bismol being spicy. This is a true fact.
Available in UK, Ireland and Canada according to the official Old El Paso websites of those countries.
I had a vindaloo in a sports pub in Fulham that had me crying. The local folks I was with had no problem with it.
when cumin is too spicy
Right, me stomach'll be in real barney rubble if I have any of 'em spices. I'll be full of raspberry tarts, I will.
Is it just antacid in sauce form? Like the mild has no spice, you can drink the stuff. How do you even get this level of anti spice?
I'm Australian and My partner is American with Mexican ancestry.
I eat shin ramyun for breakfast, and My partner can't handle it because it's too spicy.
I used to be mad jealous of the families that could afford to have the extravagance of brand name Old el Paso mexican dining at home.
It seemed/I was told that shit was too expensive for us. I never tried mexican food until I moved out of fucking university.
Mexican food is the cheapest and easiest and most delicious food to make. Old el Paso is old el crapo when you can just throw some tomatoes, garlic, and onion in a blender with whatever pepper you prefer and you've got amazing fresh salsa.
you can just throw some tomatoes, garlic, and onion in a blender with whatever pepper you prefer and you’ve got amazing fresh salsa.
as a pre-teen child?
I meant now as an adult, but yeah definitely as a pre-teen, too. You think kids can't cook? There's a whole show about it. A reality show.
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