Jalapenos Can Be Dangerous

As I mentioned in a previous post, I made tom yum goong this past Saturday evening. The recipe I used called for 12 thai chili peppers. Of course, I couldn’t find 12 chili peppers at the Whole Foods where I did my shopping for the evening. So instead I substituted 2 jalapeno peppers.

Before Saturday I had never prepped jalapenos for cooking so I asked the Professor what to do with them. The first time I made the soup she had been kind enough to do most of the prep work so all I had to do was throw the sliced peppers into the pot. I figured it would be a relatively easy task to cut them in half lengthwise, scoop out the insides and then slice them into long thin pieces per her instructions. And it was an easy task.

The mistake I made was to use my bare thumbs to do the scooping. Apparently this should be avoided. There is a reason why jalapenos are hot, and that reason can very easily get into your eyes and other places where it shouldn’t be. I didn’t really take that into consideration while prepping the peppers. After the jalapenos were sliced and ready I started working on peeling the shrimp, a task which can be rather meditative if approached in a, well, meditative way. As I was doing that over the sink I noticed that my forehead started to feel hot and a slight burning sensation started to develop. I didn’t pay any attention to it until the pain started getting worse. For a brief moment I actually thought it may have been the fumes from the shrimp. That didn’t make any sense of course. It was only after my thumbs started burning as well that I made the connection that perhaps this pain I was experiencing might have something to do with the jalapenos. What else could it have been? Try as I might by washing both my forehead and thumb tips with cold water, then warm water and then more cold water, I couldn’t quite get the burning sensation to go away.

As the evening progressed the burning did subside to a very manageable level. I didn’t even notice it much until I put either my head or my thumbs over anything hot (like the boiling soup or the pasta I was making) at which point the burning sensation would immediately increase. I almost couldn’t transfer the linguini from the pot into the skillet because it hurt so much. Even two days later at work I had the same problem whenever my thumbs went near anything hot.

It is now Wednesday and my thumbs are fully recovered. Fortunately for me I didn’t get anything into my eyes. I’m still thanking God for that. When I told some of my coworkers about my jalapeno incident their response was “Duh! Of course you don’t use your bare hands when preparing jalapenos!” I’ll take that as a lesson learned.