Measuring Latinidad By Chile-Eating Abilities

By now if you’ve been reading NewsTaco, you know that I love beans. Well, today, I want you to know another deep, dark secret about myself: I love chile. The hotter the better — and I’ve also recently developed an affinity for a little bit of garlic in the chile.

My chile-eating abilities have grown over the years, and if you tend to eat chile you will know this is largely in part due to family peer pressure. The first time I tried a chile piquín I cried, put ice on my tongue and went and hid from everyone because I was embarrassed (I thought it was worth it because a man dared me to do so for $100; he never paid up, by the way). Since, I’ve come to love chiles piquín and have been popping them recently individually instead of making salsa because I’m in the market for a food processor.

These familial, or friendly, chile-eating contests are not necessarily aggressive, but they do exert pressure. “¡N’mbre, eso no pica nada!” says one, and so you think to yourself, “If it’s not hot for him, maybe I can handle it, too.” And then your tongue feels like it’s going to burn off — but you’re not going to say anything because you don’t want anyone else to know your tongue is going to burn off! And so it goes, for years and years, until you get your stamina up and you can handle increasingly hotter salsa and chile.

Recently, I gave a Chinese friend quite a start when I piled on the chile sauce in an Indonesian restaurant. She was quite shocked. It’s because she’s Asian, I thought to myself, she probably doesn’t eat as much chile as we do. Then this morning I did the same thing with salsa on my breakfast tacos, several Latinas at the table were also taken aback.

Which is to say, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m a chile-eating monster, making my family challenges less interesting, but I think I’ve ultimately come out the winner. I’ve gotten to the point where nothing tastes as good as it could without chile. Eggs? Tabasco or Tapatío please! Sandwich? Jalapeños, ¡por favor! You get the idea. I’m always hankering for some chile — even on my fruit — and it always seems to surprise those around me! And so now I have to wonder what that whole chile-eating abilities contest was actually trying to prove.