Blog entries tagged science

Tour the Ultimate Chilehead Garden

Lois Manno — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:09:39 +0100

Whether pepper gardening is your passion, or you’re just getting started with that first pot of plants, from now through October you can visit the gardens at New Mexico State University’s Fabian Garcia Science Center in Las Cruces. There you’ll see peppers being grown the way the pros do it, and pos...

Ask Chef Mike: Why Heatless Jalapeños?

Lois Manno — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:21:20 +0100

Q: I heard about some guy who has developed a jalapeño pepper with no heat. Why would anybody do that?

A: Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Some manufacturers of hot products prefer to use heatless chile varieties and add heat later during processing through ...

Battle for the World's Hottest Record Continues

Lois Manno — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:39:52 +0100

Whenever someone tries to lay claim to the biggest, best, or most intense record for pretty much anything, they run the risk of being challenged.

When the subject is the world's hottest pepper, the stakes are high, bot...

Dave's Chile Podcasts To Begin

Dave DeWitt — Thu, 12 May 2011 10:25:33 +0100

Sunbelt Shows, Inc., owner of the Fiery Foods & Barbecue SuperSite, has announced the launch of Dave DeWitt's Chile Podcasts, a weekly audio show that features interviews with the top leaders and characters in the fiery foods and barbecue industr...

Could the Cure for Cancer be Found in Chiles?

Kelli Bergthold — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:36:03 +0100

The much sought after cure for cancer could be heating up. Recent findings from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center suggests that capsaicin, the active chemical compound that gives chile peppers their heat, may reduce and even block chronic inflammation pathways in cancer cells.

I...

Maya Natural Sea Salt Harvest

Dave DeWitt — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 15:48:02 +0100

Rick Grice of Maya Natural Sea Salt just sent me a link to pics of his salt harvest, which apparently has been going on long before he was born! Rick writes: "White Gold or Mayan Sea Salt has been the subject of numerous books and scholarl...

Fiery Foods Team to Try for "Hottest Chile" Record

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 21:56:45 +0100

Above is the press release about our ongoing attempt at the Guinness World Record for what they call "Hottest Chili." We missed it by that much, but never fear, we'll be back! Read the entire story here.

University of Warwick Response to Naga Viper Testing

Dave DeWitt — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:46:02 +0100

We wanted to make sure that everyone understands the position of University of Warwick regarding testing of the Naga Viper. Peter Dunn, head of communications, just sent us this statement:

The University of Warwick School of Life Sciences has been asked by a n...

Pepper Spray for Your House?

Kelli Bergthold — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 22:15:36 +0100

The Burglar Blaster security system

Ever wish you had a more appropriate way than an ADT Home Security system to safeguard your hot sauce collection? Imagine if a burglar snuck into your house, tripped the alarm system, and was sprayed with a fiery blast of pepper spray? Now that’s poetic justice. T...

The Pepper Eater Project

Kelli Bergthold — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:26:06 +0100

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that producing fiery foods is more than just a passion – in many parts of the world, chile production and processing is a necessity. Dried red pepper is the one of the most widely consumed spices in the world, eaten daily by one-quarter of the world’s population. Chile pe...

DIY Altoids BBQ Grill

Kelli Bergthold — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:26:31 +0100

Mini BBQ from Instructables

You don’t have to be a kid to appreciate something as cool as a BBQ grill made out of an Altoids container. The model pictured is just one of many DIY designs that have been featured all over the Web. This grill is made using an Altoids Sours tin, some sheet metal screws, metal nuts, and a couple of...

Harald Zoschke on German Superhot Testing

Dave DeWitt — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 19:50:22 +0100

Harald Zoschke, our key chilehead correspondent in Europe, reports:

Our Calabrian-grown 'Bhut Jolokia' tested at 818,386 SHU (twice the result of Assam-grown 'Bhut' analyzed at the same lab in Hamburg, btw.!)
The Indians' superhot 'Chocolat...

Progenitor of 'Bhut Jolokia' Found?

Dave DeWitt — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:38:56 +0100

For the 5+ years that the rumors and then stories about the superhot 'Bhut Jolokia' from Assam in northeast India have surfaced, I've wondered about its origin. Pods of Capsicum chinense are found all over the Caribb...

Genetically Engineered Salmon Go Before FDA Approval Panel

Kelli Bergthold — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:12:07 +0100

Genetically engineered salmon (top) compared to natural salmon.

A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel will decide Monday, September 27 whether the first genetically engineered food animal proposed for public consumption will be safe to eat and safe for the environment. The...

Peppered Seals?

Kelli Bergthold — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 22:13:07 +0100

Pepper spray has a long history of being used for self defense against both humans and wild animals. It’s an effective, non-lethal weapon that can keep people safe without having to resort to brute force. The active ingredient in pepper spray is oleoresin capsicum, which is a wax-like resin extracted from f...

Media Mangles Report: Capsaicin Does Not Cause Skin Cancer

Lois Manno — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 23:54:08 +0100

A study in the journal Cancer Research appears to link capsaicin, a component of chili peppers, to skin cancer. This is a misinterpretation of the data, according to SuperSite Publisher Dave DeWitt, international authority on chili peppers and author of more than forty books about peppers, including The Healin...

Food Books That Make You Think

Dave DeWitt — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:09:04 +0100

Food history is a relatively new scholarly discipline, going back only

Dave DeWitt — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 06:00:00 +0100

Several varieties of chile pepper seeds, including 'Wenk's Yellow Hots', 'Pico de Gallo', and the "unpredictably hot" 'San Juan Tsiles' have arrived at the so-called "doomsday vault" at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near the town of Longyearbyen in the re...

Strong Vinegar as a Natural Herbicide

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:18:07 +0100

I attempt to use organic techniques in the garden whenever possible, although I'm not a True Believer in the classic sense of the term. One thing I do dislike are chemical herbicides like RoundUp, but I occasionally have used it when ...