November 21, 2024

28 thoughts on “VIDEO: The "heat" in jalapeños isn't where you think…

  1. I have one heck of a reaction every time I cut jalapenos. It instantly burns my fingers, so I have to wear gloves. Then it slowly burns my face; mind you, I never touch my face while cutting jalapenos nor does any jalapeno juice splash on my face.

  2. Hmm – at one time, the NMSU Dept of Ag researchers were stating that the heat is actually in the cell walls of the flesh of the chilè jalapeño – but I haven't been able to verify that by searching their websites. BTW – never heard the white part holding the seeds called the placenta – where do you placenta namers hail from? Just curious.

  3. More specifically, it's the structure from which the seeds grow and develop, called the placenta. The reason people think the seeds are hot is that they're in direct contact with the placenta and very often get the capsaicin on them. However, if you were to wash the seeds first, like of a ghost pepper for example, they would not contain any capsaicin of their own.

    Another fun fact, capsaicin is an oil and therefore oil soluble. This is why drinking water doesn't really help cool the burn, but drinking milk does. This is also why if you stuff hot peppers with cheese and fry them to make poppers, both the cheese and the frying oil will dilute the capsaicin out and make it more tolerable. I've made poppers out of habaneros before, and they're pretty good.

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