Peppery fast foods, sauces are hot trend, getting hotter

The spicy trend is on fire at fast-food restaurants, including KFC, which is cooking up Nashville Hot Chicken.
The spicy trend is on fire at fast-food restaurants, including KFC, which is cooking up Nashville Hot Chicken.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- The heat is on.

Spicy food and drinks reveal hot is happening, and not just because Beyonce may or may not carry hot sauce in her bag.

While certainly it's not news that this is one of those millennial-driven food trends (so very spring 2015), it's noteworthy. Because it's still trending. America's most coveted consumers are increasingly hot for an increasingly varied lot of spicy food.

The latest fascination involves, of all things, the dairy case, says Food Processing, a trade magazine for food and drink manufacturers. From "hot" ice cream spiked with Tabasco to Sriracha-mango Greek yogurt, "bright spices and peppers" are showing up in some dairy foods, the magazine reported this month.

At the snack aisle, teenagers are gobbling up the scorch bombs known as Takis, tiny rolled tortilla crisps that come in spicy flavors with names like Fuego and Xplosion and Nitro.

And, hey, hot honey is now a thing.

Heat-seekers are finding spicy recognition at the drive-through, as well. Take Wendy's spicy sandwich of the moment, the Jalapeno Fresco Spicy Chicken Sandwich. It's a spicy chicken breast that's topped with ghost pepper sauce, pepper jack cheese and diced jalapenos on a red jalapeno bun.

Over at Taco Bell, spicy sorts can customize their Fiery Doritos Locos Tacos with Flamin' Hot Fritos and jalapenos. And, yes, there's Nashville Hot Chicken, KFC's take on the spicy classic that originated in the city's black neighborhoods in the 1940s.

In truth, the story of culinary heat in the United States is a deeply American story, one that rings from Louisiana and Texas to Tennessee. But sometimes it's an American story because it is a deeply global story, a story of new immigrants bringing new flavors and new levels of heat.

When it comes to heat, there's a difference between the fad, the fascination and the foundation. The fad and fascination may be ephemeral (as in the hot burger of the month), but they rise against a backdrop of a new American flavor foundation that has been moving toward the spicy for the better part of two decades.

Industry watchers have noted that hot sauce sales rocketed by 150 percent from 2000 to 2013 alone, more so than the country's classic condiments. The "new" America is a place where hot sauce can be found in more than half of the nation's households, as the sales-tracking firm NPD Group reported last year.

But that hot sauce selection has expanded beyond the usual Tabasco. Bottled heat now speaks with a global range of accents, from Thai and Jamaican to Nicaraguan. And the heat comes from peppers beyond the trusty jalapeno.

Ask Bruce Ollis, machinist by trade, ghost pepper entrepreneur by passion. He started growing the fiery, sneaky-heat peppers in his Wellington, Fla., backyard just a few years ago. He and his wife, Stacey Ollis, began turning those peppers into hot sauce, or dehydrating them and grinding them into spice mixes.

These peppers are hot, as in 10 times hotter than the spiciest habanero pepper. Hot enough to scare away less adventurous sorts. But in this new, heat-loving era, they're a hit.

In less than four years, the Ollises' Bruce's Ghost Pepperz enterprise has outgrown their backyard and kitchen. Bruce's peppers are now grown by a Loxahatchee farm and processed at a separate facility.

"When I was a kid, it was ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise. Now hot sauce has taken the country by storm. The American palate is changing," says Bruce Ollis, who notes that his customers are skewing "much younger."

Chef and heat-purveyor Charlie Soo has "stupid spicy" scorpion chiles immersed in oil, and he has super-hot Thai bird chiles at the ready. Come into his Talay Thai restaurant in Palm Beach Gardens and dare to order your curry at a level 5 (the highest on his heat chart), and you just may regret it. Level 3 is spicy enough, level 4 scorching.

He agrees that customer interest in heat has grown, but says the interest is not coming from his millennial customers.

"I'm seeing more women overall order spicy," he says. "You want to talk about a trend? It's the women who are eating spicy these days."

Yep, from Beyonce to Hillary Clinton. Oh, did we mention? The presidential candidate carries a bottle of Ninja Squirrel Sriracha sauce on the campaign trail. As if the trail isn't scorching enough.

Style on 05/24/2016

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