Turns out my heat tolerance has gone way up. Over the summer a few drops of Dave's Insanity Sauce nearly caused me convulsions. I gave it another shot and I was pouring it on a steak burrito like salsa sauce. It was HOT but no where like the first time I tried it in the summer. I guess all of this ingestion of different potency habenaros on a regular basis have built up my tolerance. Dave's Insanity Sauce actually had good flavor, and I would love it if the wings were made in that stuff! Although.. I must admit.. the next day my stomach was destroyed so I had to take a break from the hot stuff I am used to consuming.

Mike

Yes, it's easy to unwittingly climb the heat ladder, the nature of addictive substances.

Dave's isn't insane to me, but like most hot sauces based on the capsaicin extract, it's flavor is a bit to 'chemically' to my tastes. I was surprised to read that it only rated 87,000 or so scoville units. I had thought it was hotter than that.

The hottest wings I had were at Crossroads by Rt 83 and North ave. in Elmhurst years ago. They brought out the bottle of concentrate that the sauce came from. They had to dilute it quite a bit before using it on their hot wings. They claimed that if they spilled the concentrate, it would eat into the concrete.

UniAddict, if you like habeneros you may want to search out the Bhut Jolokia chili. They are to habeneros what habeneros are to Jalepenos. I've never had them and I think they would be too hot for me, but I'd at least like to smell them.

These recent posts surprise me!

I thought I could handle hot stuff and was able to eat all of the ten wings but I can not lie - they were really, really frickin' hot!

For me, I had an out of body experience - no lie.

I have heard that depending on the night/chef that the wings can be inconsistent in regards to the level of heat.

While I love the heat that comes from the unique spices used in different cuisines, I don't think a good spicy Gumbo would benefit from adding a half bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce. I feel the same way about my wings.

I have never understood the hotter the better thought process. I guess It might be the same as seeing who can drink a bottle of Tabasco or swallow Gold Fish.

Marshall K wrote:While I love the heat that comes from the unique spices used in different cuisines, I don't think a good spicy Gumbo would benefit from adding a half bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce. I feel the same way about my wings.

I have never understood the hotter the better thought process. I guess It might be the same as seeing who can drink a bottle of Tabasco or swallow Gold Fish.

Tabasco? Is that even hot?

There's very few foods I prefer extremely spicy and, actually, chicken wings is not one of them. I like them at medium spicy, with hot sauce on the side. This was just a fun little exercise for me. (Although, I do have to say, the sauce itself at Melnick's had great flavor and were the wings themselves better executed, I might make a regular go at these.) Now, some Thai holy basil chicken--give that to me as hot as you can possibly make it. There's something about the pungency of fish sauce combined with mouth blistering spice that makes me a very happy person.

Binko wrote:Now, some Thai holy basil chicken--give that to me as hot as you can possibly make it. There's something about the pungency of fish sauce combined with mouth blistering spice that makes me a very happy person.

Binko,

I used to frequent Thai Aree on Milwaukee, but most always went in with a mixed crowd, meaning some liked it spicy some not. One day I went in for a solo lunch and asked Eddie the owner to please light me up. The Thai basil chicken he brought out had, I'm guessing, equal parts chicken and fresh minced Thai pepper, this in addition to an equally volcanic green curry.

Took me two large bowls of rice and three pitchers of water, but I ate every bite, sweat like a southern race horse, started to hallucinate, but at the end of my capsicum induced journey I had achieved oneness with the heat.

Sometimes it's fun to take a roller coaster ride.

Enjoy,
Gary

Thai Aree
3592 N Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL 60641
773-725-6751

My daughter sent me this, which seemed appropriate to post here:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-NNzI3RTZ7I

Great stuff, there's a bunch of vids of people trying the Bhut Jolokia on there...I'm going to watch more right now...