That which steadily performs, day in and day out. The snack to which all others must be compared. True heat aficionados won’t be satisfied but your cousin from Connecticut who calls La Croix “spicy water” should be able to handle them. The mouth-puckering tang gives way to a pleasant crunch and modest heat, making it easy to unconsciously plow your way through a bag. Our resident social media guru, Lauren Lee, is convinced they ate a hole in one of her molars.Īnd yet, even as your teeth are melting, it’s hard to stop eating these. Pop Fuego kernels are not particularly heat-heavy but they’re almost hyperbolically tangy and acidic. It’s more like popping blackheads on your friend’s back after gym class: It’s gross, but you kind of love it, and you hate yourself for loving it. Maybe roller coaster isn’t the right word. The MSG is cranked up to a 12, and the innocent, lightly pink color of the kernels belies a highly intense flavor roller coaster. I say “incomparable” because I literally don’t know what to compare it to - I vacillated between whether this was very good or very, very bad, and I ended up deciding that I like it. I bring you the incomparable Pop Fuego, basically Takis popcorn. The minor downside is that the airy, fried texture, while initially novel, can become a little nauseating as the pieces become consistently compacted in your back teeth. The puffs are consistently, heavily seasoned. With spicy standard-issue Cheetos and Doritos, you get odd ones with barely any spice at all, and a handful of “good ones” with a lot of powder caked on them. These little guys, shaped like a cartoon elephant’s trunk, are just like regular Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, right? Not so! The tiny dimples in the fried puffed corn hold the spice powder better, leading to a more intense heat and flavor. I have ranked the snacks based on 1) flavor and 2) heat, the amount of saliva-coaxing capsaicin I detected in each one. There are subtle differences, which I will happily illustrate below. What’s that you say? All these Flamin’ Hot and spicy snacks taste the same? UNTRUE. I have compiled every spicy snack known to mankind, save for the ones that I could not find, deem unworthy of inclusion, or both. Like strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, their infiltration of our country cannot be stopped, so there’s little point in fighting it. What about the children? Well, the millennials and Gen Z-ers are at the forefront of this red-hot orgy, frankly, and it is in that spirit that I hereby present to you the authoritative, definitive and completely undisputed L.A. Now, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a hot-chicken place, or a YouTuber posting a video of themselves eating Carolina Reapers and other esophagus-destroying peppers. We’ve gotten far, far away from the actual origins of spiciness in food - to prevent and mask spoilage, impart flavor and even keep rats away. We have a nationwide preoccupation with heat.
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