By KAREN MADORIN
Normally, someone referring to hot fingers makes me think of thievery. After a recent jalapeño popper- making session, scorched fingers now come to mind.
I thought I’d learned this lesson years ago when I canned jalapeños. That time, I picked a two-gallon bucket full of the searing torches and did NOT wear gloves to deseed or defiber them. Holy cow, my hands sizzled for three solid days. I washed them repeatedly. I used high quality hand lotion. I soaked them in milk. I soaked them in baking soda. I soaked them in vinegar. Nothing alleviated that pain. The fiery sensation prevented sleep, leaving me contentious as a momma bear.
This time, I only cleaned 24 freshly-harvested peppers to make poppers, dices, and slices. Because of past experience, I wore gloves while removing seeds and internal fibers. Once I’d cut them in half, I parboiled them before filling with cream cheese and wrapping with par-cooked bacon to reduce baking time later.
I filled those little dugouts with the cream cheese, garlic, and cheddar mixture. Then I wrapped each one in a half slice of bacon, skewered with a toothpick. Again. no issues. Latex protected my fingers.
What triggered the melt-down involved 6 leftover deseeded peppers. For those who make their own poppers, you know we can’t waste a perfectly good, cleaned jalapeño. I decided to dice half and slice decorative rings from the rest.
Using gloves to finely dice something is difficult, so I tugged them off. After all, I’d removed scorching seeds and combustible guts. Surely, I was safe. Yeah, right….
Acting like the queen of cutting boards and sharp knives, I slivered those babies and diced them into tiny bits to toss into soups and casseroles this winter. So finely chopped, it took a while to collect the bits into a container, but my nerve cells remained calm for that moment.
Once I got the slivered bits in the bag, nerve receptors hit the alert button, which I ignored. What the heck? I’d washed ‘em and set out cleaned, whole peppers for decorative slicing. While I didn’t think I’d contacted innards, sensory detectors disagreed. Suddenly, a three-alarm fire nipped at every finger-tip on both hands. I had to finish the job, so I worked through the pain and stored those pretty little rings to garnish winter meals.
After tucking those fiery treasures into the freezer, I washed and washed and washed agonized flesh. I coated it with lanoline-based creams. That helped for a minute or two before jalapeño capsaicin re-activated. Clearly, pepper flesh contains chemical enough to trigger nerve endings even when seeds and stringy flesh are removed.
While six of those poppers roasted enticingly in the oven, I continued washing with soap and water over and over and over. Frankly, I didn’t expect relief after that three-day marathon of burning flesh a few decades ago. The good news is this time wearing gloves prevented that. I may have gotten a reminder of that experience, but soap and water finally did the trick, letting nerve endings calm.
Lesson learned. No matter how awkward it is to wear gloves while dicing jalapeños, do it anyway. The poppers tasted great, by the way. I think I’ll throw on a pair of gloves and make a second batch to carry us through coming cold days.