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Thursday, January 20, 2011

n00b alert: Four Dead Giveaways!

Not only the world's most badass investor, WB is also a veritable fount of simple yet profound quotes. Normally focused on the financial world, he also sometimes takes a crack at offering life lessons. Below is a quote I've always enjoyed:

"If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy."
-Warren Buffet

This is a great metaphor for many things in life, but one particularly near and dear to my heart is the circumstance where people (unwittingly) demonstrate their utter lack of knowledge or ability without having any idea that they have done so. For instance, take a new skier. Walking towards the chairlift carrying their skis, they are feeling pretty confident about their abilities. However, the fact is they are carrying their skis with the tips facing backwards and are rocking a big ol' gapper gap; clearly exposing themselves to the rest of the world as n00bs.

In a similar vein, there are four major commonly seen no-nos in the hot sauce world that will ink you as a total n00b.

1) "The heat of a pepper comes from the seeds". Um... WRONG! I heard this one this past weekend, and couldn't help myself from going off on the poor kid. So yeah, this is most certainly the biggest FAIL you could make. The heat comes from the Capsaicin, which is housed in a thin sack (a vesicle if you want to be a nerd about it) along the flesh of the pepper. The seeds themselves do not have heat; they just seem hot because of their proximity to capsaicinoid gland (which is very delicate, and often ruptures; leading the seeds to get a little "contact high" if you will).

2) "I love Chipotles, but I hate Jalapenos". FAIL again. A chipotle IS a Jalapeno that has been smoked and dried. (hi smokey flavor!) Please review a venn diagram- subsets if this is still not clear. In this case, Chipotle=A, Jalapeno=B

3) "The red yucateco is much hotter than the green. Green sauces are always milder than red sauces" ding ding ding, that's incorrect! Green= 9k, Red=5.79k. Something about those zero scoville rated tomatoes brings down the red....

and finally 4) "Habaneros are the hottest peppers in the world" While yes they are most likely the hottest pepper the average person encounters at 100-350k (the red savina strain has clocked in even higher at 580k ), they are actually only the third hottest pepper. Comfortably ahead of the habs in the two spot is the mighty Dorset Naga Pepper from England at 875-970k. And then sitting in the top spot, the baddest pepper to ever grace the scene, the fearsome Bhut Jolokia Pepper aka the GHOST PEPPER. This guy comes in at over a million scoville units, and destroys anything in its path. Don't believe, check out the video of this guy below (and note, he is an extremely experienced chilihead that eats habs like they are peanuts).


Miz-city, starts circa the 1 minute mark


thanks to JS "15 mins of game" weinberg for the video

3 comments:

  1. you missed the world's HOTTEST food..the fire root consumed by the world's biggest .....
    (you can fill in the blank...)
    Nice post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hahaha, and who was smart enough not to eat said fire root and get blisters all over their mouth and face?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've done it. This guys a wimp.

    ReplyDelete