what you're talking about is "chow" my wife makes it from time to time. if you wanna make it better the trick is to use fresh peppers. it takes way too much sauce to do the trick. cut up a habanero or something and mix it in with the fruit. garlic and culantro too. and lime juice. lots of lime juice.

Vinegar, in particular, really takes the heat out of peppers, Pam. But sugars will also. That's why you see so many sauces and salsas with fruits like mango and pineapple.

Try a fresh or roasted Jalapeno and then a PICKLED one. Hardly ANY heat whatsoever in the pickled one.

I'm not saying you can take a bite of ghost pod and you'll be fine with a spoonful of brown sugar. Dairy is still the only known cure for that. I think there actually has to be some reaction time between acid/sugar and the pepper for the heat to dissipate. JMO

Kevin

Judo, when saying chow around here you need to maybe say Caribbean chow, this part of the world (okie ;-)) chow is a condiment like Mr's renfros chow chow. My friend never called it anything, just said it's what they snack on. But now I'll remember you call it chow. They used his hot sauce diluted down, no fresh peppers. and it was hot. but, they didn't have any melon in it, that's why I kinda figured it might be due to the melon.

Maybe I'm a woos Kevin, but there's heat in my pickled jalapenos. ;-) And I know everyone says milk, but I have tried it more than once and I didn't notice any effect, except temporary. This absolutely had no heat. I can not eat a spoonful of my hot sauce by itself, but I put more than that on a slice of melon. And Kevin, ain't no way in hell I am going to eat a ghost pepper with or without sugar! ;-) Heck, I've made candied jalapenos and they were hot, I could eat them easy enough, and I Loved them, but they were hot. No way I'm going to do that with a ghost.

What I'm trying to say, yep, I know that pickling and candying decrease the heat, but there's still heat, this was nil, absolute zero. That's what dumbfounded me, I have never had anything decrease the heat (of something I know is hot, and undiluted) to 0.

Pam

This post was edited by kuvaszlvr on Thu, Aug 15, 13 at 20:55

if I remember correctly you had previously said your Trinidadian friend's husband makes really really hot sauce. if it's hot enough, then maybe it would work, but as I understand it the traditional recipe involves fresh peppers. apparently melon is a common ingredient, but mango and plum (what they call a plum, which looks nothing like normal plums) are the most common ingredients. I've only had it a few times, so I'm no expert.

haha, well, I've only had it once, so I'm definitely no expert, only repeating what she told me. It's hot...and it's been a long time since I've had it so I don't remember how hot, he puts a lot of herbs in his, not something I'm used to. I don't know if it's hotter than my Tabasco or not (haha, the really hot sauce maker is her BIL who is from Vietnam). Funny too, she said not to use melon unless it's not very ripe. The bowl she gave me consisted mostly of pineapple and apples. I have searched and searched for the "recipe" she sent me and I can't find it. As she puts it, throw in some of this and that. But her recipe she wrote, "hot sauce" no mention of peppers. I guess no one in Trinidad makes it the same way. ;-)
Pam

This post piqued my curiousity, I like melon with spiciness and make a thai melon salad every summer when the melons start really producing. That's usually made with fresh peppers and is always a nice level of spicy. I found a recipe for trini chow on a site called Carribean Pot using slightly green mango, garlic, shallot, fresh peppers and a culantro hot sauce. So that didn't really shed any light on anything but made me hungry. I happen to have the first ripe melon of the season right here... And some nice Aji hot sauce from last season... So I put some on a slice and it seemed plenty hot to me! And delicous.

So here's just a guess, melon can negate the efffects of some of the capsacinoids but not all of them. I'm remembering a discussion from late winter where is was mentioned that different peppers have different "hot" compounds which is why they seem to hit in different part of the mouth or at different times. You know, like the up front quick burn versus the one where you say"this isn't too bad" and have another bite and then realize the first bite is actually searing you from the back of the tongue all the way down and you are about to be in a world of firy pain. Not that that has ever happened to me. Nope.