Food Product Design: Focus On Perspectives - May 2001 - Turning up the Heat

May 2001

By Nancy C. Rodriguez
Contributing Editor

Pick up any trade publication today and you’ll find a hot and spicy feature or trends report. Hundreds of websites are dedicated to chile-heads. Quick-service restaurants (QSR) offer spicy entrées and ultra-spicy condiments. Supermarket shelves that once devoted inches to hot sauces now have entire sections featuring hot and spicy products, and offerings of spiced-up chicken wings, pulled pork, seafood, jerky, vegetables, dry mixes, beverages, cheese, crackers, popcorn, chips, dips and even candy.

Through the 1990s, an influx of Asian, Caribbean and Hispanic immigrants wooed our European-inspired meat and potato appetites with exotic hot-spice flavors. Baby Boomers, who were more open to new foods than their predecessors, led the way, spiking bland no-fat products in hopes of having both a healthy old age and good-tasting food.

Recent statistics from the American Spice Trade Association (ASTA), Englewood Cliffs, NJ, show that 39% of total (dried) spice use in 1998 was hot spices. This figure does not include liquid pepper sauces, prepared mustards or fresh chiles. Three spices constitute ASTA’s top sellers: black/ white pepper, red pepper/chiles and mustard seed.

Sensory evaluation has great value in balancing heat and flavor, in monitoring ingredient quality and heat quantity, and creating targeted hot foods that set off alarms, win awards and please customers.

The fire that binds
Historical, cultural and physical attributes of hot spices influence the sensory perspective. Hot spices evoke primitive responses: sweating, eye-smarting, nose-running, tongue- and lip-smacking and stomach-churning excitement. Of all hot spices, none are as fearsome as members of the genus Capsicum, chiles. The South American Indian word for chile translates to “I’ll bite you.” These can irritate pain-receptor cells in the mouth, nose and stomach, and desensitize taste buds.

Why is spice-fired food so popular? In a Philadelphia-based Monell Chemical Senses Center symposium, eating hot peppers was described as a masochistic roller coaster thrill of the body’s reaction to danger and stimulation of endorphins, the body’s internal pleasure drug. On the other hand, it may be that people like spicy foods simply because they add a new dimension to flavor.

Chemicals in capsicums are mildly addictive. Eating hot chiles leads to eating hotter chiles to maintain the same mouth sensation. Another theory is that those who crave super hot foods are “non-tasters” who have significantly fewer taste buds than 50% of the population who are dubbed “regular tasters.” Supertasters, those who are extra-sensitive to bitter, sweet and hot foods, make up 25% of the population.

Understanding hot spices
Understanding how hot spices work facilitates formulating with them. For example, the type of oil in mustard seed impacts both pungency and flavor. Oriental and brown mustard seed contain a volatile heat-carrying oil and biting flavor. The non-volatile oil in yellow mustard has strong mustard flavor but lacks pungency. Mustard seed is available as whole yellow, ground yellow, flour, paste, encapsulated on salt or dextrose caps, or as an oleoresin (mustard extraction mixed with oil). Each type has recommended applications, based on such factors as emulsion stability and texture. Depending on the type and form used, as well as what it may be mixed with, the impact can range from mildly savory to fiery. Unlike chiles, mustard heat quickly dissipates.

White and black pepper come from the same plant. White pepper has a milder, more delicate flavor and is used primarily in light-colored foods where visible particulates are not desirable. Black pepper has a higher moisture content, which affects emulsions. Spice alternatives (encapsulated extractives on salt or dextrose carriers and oleoresins) provide both oil- and water-soluble ingredients that work in liquids and emulsions, deliver instant flavor and meet stability requirements. Peppers are available whole, cracked, ground (various particle sizes), pulverized and in blends.

Piperine, the chemical that makes black pepper hot, is perceived on the lips and front of the tongue. The percentage of piperine in pepper sometimes is listed as a measurement of heat. A 100-ppm solution of piperine is roughly equivalent in pungency to 1- or 2-ppm capsaicin, the compound that makes chiles hot.

Capsaicin contains three chemical elements that head straight for the throat and back of the palate, and two others with a slower, longer-lasting impact on the tongue and mid-palate. Curiously, capsaicin is odorless and flavorless, but strong enough to irritate the skin. Care must be taken when handling any chile that still has the capsaicin-containing veins to which the seeds are attached.
Capsaicin is not water-soluble, which presents challenges both for food product designers and chile-eaters who want to quench a burning mouth. Beer and soft drinks merely slosh around the hot stuff; the casein in dairy products (milk, yogurt, cheese, ice cream and milk chocolate) is among the most effective relief agents; and cold foods bring a quick but fleeting fix. Other items that reportedly suppress capsaicin are acids (lemon, lime or tomato juice), sugar, salt, corn, rice, bread, beans, potatoes and nuts.

Sharon Gamboa, quality assurance manager, Rio Valley Chili, Rincon, NM, puts her money on salt. “You can eat hot salsa with salted chips for quite a while because the salt counteracts the burning,” she maintains. Still, folks who make a competitive sport of doing shots of hot sauce with names like Insanity Sauce and Mad Dog Inferno would rather endure fire and smoke than accept a glass of milk or carton of yogurt to relieve their pain.

Long before North American chefs featured spicy fruit salsas, there were Indian chutneys, and Moroccan and Brazilian fruit salads. Ethnic cuisines built around chiles often use suppressants. Indian curries, for example, are cooled down with yogurt. Mexican salsas are served with rice, beans and cheese. Spicy Indonesian satay is perfectly complemented by a flavorful sauce that contains chile, lemon juice, vinegar, sugar, spices and peanuts. Tunisians spoon fiery tomato-based harissa on bland potatoes, couscous and chickpeas. Harissa is made with ground chiles, tempered with lemon juice and tamarind, or vinegar and sugar.

Measuring heat and flavor
Hotness in chiles and pepper is most widely measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU), based on a test devised in 1912, in which testers taste ground red pepper in a sugar- or salt-water solution in increasingly diluted concentrations, until they no longer feel mouthburn. A number representing the dilution is then assigned to the chile. Chile pungency ranges from 0 SHU for a bell pepper to 300,000 SHU for a habanero. Pure capsaicin scores over 15,000,000 SHU. Trained sensory panels currently use a modified version of this method, sanctioned by the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM).

An alternative method, promoted by ASTA, uses high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). In this test, ground dry or fresh chiles (or other hot spices) are subjected to a chemical analysis. The rating often is converted to SHU (1 ASTA unit = 15 SHU). ASTA provides an objective analysis of heat and capsaicin content for companies primarily concerned with heat-level consistency. HPLC has limitations, however. “In the past, we relied on red pepper for heat. It’s no longer that simple,” says Ellen Gibb, manager of sensory science, McCormick & Company Inc., Hunt Valley, MD. “The hot spice revolution has made it necessary for us to identify various chiles, not just for heat, but for individual flavor profiles.”

Hands-on hot
Rio Valley Chili grows 70% of the chiles used in their products on their own ranches in northern New Mexico. This allows the company some control over agricultural variations. They do not, for instance, use “red after green” chiles, which are left on the vine after the green chile harvest in August. Nor do they harvest chiles that have frozen on the vine, because they take on grassy or hay-like flavors. “We balance flavor from domestic chile varieties with hot imported peppers that have high SHU,” says Dave Holtzrichter, vice president of sales and marketing, Rio Valley Chili, “but we closely monitor the seed ratio and additives, such as annatto, in imported products.”

JeanMarie Brownson, partner and culinary director at Chef Rick Bayless’ Frontera Foods, Inc., Chicago, oversees Frontera’s commercial food product line of shelf-stable salsas, sauces, rubs and mixes. Brownson takes a highly sensory approach; though she has high praise for her knowledgeable chile buyers and manufacturers, she personally taste-tests each batch. “I know what I want,” she says, explaining that adjustments have to be made to account for agricultural variations in fresh products and changes that take place during processing. “It’s the chile, not the capsaicin that has flavor. Toasting, roasting and browning dried chiles enhances the flavor and intensifies the heat. I balance heat with sugar, acid, salt and bitterness.” How finely ingredients are chopped or pureed makes a world of difference to the flavor, she maintains.

On a larger scale, “an analytical test can tell how much heat there is, but a group of trained sensory panelists can create a picture of how a product tastes — a picture of the whole eating experience,” says Gibb. The company now includes sensory-based flavor profiles in many of their specification sheets.

Hot off the production line
Food Marketing Support Services Inc. (FMSS), Oak Park, IL, has had great success with a sensory-based procedure for hot-and-spicy product development. First, a target audience’s hot-and-spicy quotient is assessed. Is the product for chile-belt southerners or a specific ethnic population? For young men who want hotter-than-hot? For normative tastes of fast-food audiences or families who want to kick everyday cooking up a notch while still pleasing the kids? Or is the product designed to appeal to women who, Sharon Gamboa suggests, like hot food, but care more about taste than men? Is the challenge to create a signature product that will appeal to the Frontera Grill crowd?

After pinpointing the audience, then look at the category — barbecue, for example — and descriptively analyze a sensory characterization of each product. Commonalities and dissimilarities should be carefully noted, and then a target system that includes intensity and duration of burn is built. It is important to go to the bench with as much information as possible.

In sourcing materials, look for specific ways to achieve targeted goals for flavor and heat, as well as practical issues related to production and budget:

Heat. Products with more gum or starch suppress heat, but may also suppress flavor. Balancing heat with flavor is a careful process. A specialty pepper’s flavor is altered by tempering it with a blend of peppers that will deliver the target heat level, and allow the varietal pepper flavor to dominate. Sometimes the fleeting, clean and sharp impact of wasabi or vinegar, rather than the pungent heat of chile, pepper or mustard is used.

Flavor. Determine what the product’s final flavor should represent. Which chile, pepper or mustard will deliver the desired flavor notes? How do we get a smoky, woody or caramelized note?

Stability. Stability is a large issue for hot and spicy foods. When it comes to stability, chemistry calls the shots, but a sensory panel monitors the process. The sensory panel monitors the point of equilibrium — when the system stands still and grows no more or less pungent, develops off-flavor, or changes texture or color.

Quality control. Hot spices demand careful specifications, supplier dependability and quality control. The FMSS sensory team recently cut their SHU teeth on such a QC issue. When a routine finished product quality check showed excessive heat, the mystery needed to be unraveled. Using the Scoville/ASTM method, the panel identified heat levels in samples that ranged from the specified 5,000 SHU to a searing 30,000 SHU. Subsequently, the end user’s inventory-control system was modified to control less than optimal practices.

In matters of heat, consider flavor. In matters of flavor, consider heat. When working with hot and pungent food products, rely on trained sensory professionals who know how to balance flavor and heat.

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