During the last 3 minutes of frying blackened catfish, it started emitting tear gas!

[htuttle]

Ysabel was in the mood for Cajun tonight, so we went with blackened catfish, dirty rice and hush puppies.

The two sides accomplished, I began to fry the spiced catfish on a REALLY HOT iron skillet, just as The Man says. I had a window fan pointing out on full blast, so I thought I was okay.

Until... about 2 minutes into the second side, I begin to cough. My eyes start watering. I start coughing uncontrollably, straining to see the clock through the tears.

My wife comes into the kitchen, she starts coughing, too. I run out of the room, counting off the remaining minute...One one-thousand...two one-thousand...trying to fling open windows through my retching coughs. Finally it's done, and so am I.

Does cayenne pepper emit some sort of pepper gas when it hits a certain temperature? A lot of the recipes warned to cook the catfish outside, but I thought the window fan would be enough.

I was wrong...

On the bright side, it tastes great, now that I can breath again.

[Lucinda]

1. Well I'm glad you survived to tell the tale!

And that it was tasty.
No words of wisdom from me though.
I am pretty much a wuss as far as "food that can melt your esophagus" go.

[Tesha]

2. lordie! they can be deadly!

we grew our own peppers one year and after addin half of an inch long tiny and perfect red pepper, I leaned over the saute pan and - the throat closed up... nada... no air... ack!!!



a long drink of cold water and I was able to breath again, and the burritos were wonderful - but man! I NEVER AGAIN lean over a pan with my hot peppers a-cookin'

I'm glad you're ok...

[htuttle]

3. Breathing fine now, but capsaicin is nothing to trifle with!

There wasn't even that much visible smoke -- it was definitely a caustic vapor that did us in.

Heat wise, I only added about a teaspoon of cayenne (admittedly, the 85,000 BTU stuff), a teaspoon of black pepper and about 1/2 teaspoon of white pepper to the fish rub. Everything else was benign, like oregano, garlic, onion powder, etc..

We occasionally go out to 'New Orleans Take Out' for Cajun eats -- I can't imagine how they stand cooking blackened fish. They must have one hell of an exhaust fan!

[Tangerine LaBamba]

4. Cook outside

It's likethe Chinese lady who taught me how to make chili oil.

We had no common spoken language, but when the oil was almost smoking hot and ready to be poured over the ground red peppers, she took my hand and the bowl with the peppers outside, and motioned me to stay there. Then she went back int her kitchen, and brought out the hot oil.

The mushroom cloud - not smoke - that went up was all the lesson I ever needed.

And now you know, having learned the hard way....................

[Tesha]

7. Mr. T and I once went on a tour of the Cabot Cheese plant (in Cabot, VT)

Sounds benign, right? But that day, they were making their Habanero
cheese (not just that low-test wimpy Jalapeño stuff) and even though
the mixing was taking place behind in a separate room behind a
glass wall, enough killer dust was filtering out of the work room
that no one, not even the tour guide, could stay on the tour;
it suddenly became a *VERY* brief tour ;) .

(The workers who were actually mixing the cheese were in full respirators
and bunny suits.)

Tesha

[elleng]

9. Glad you recovered!

IMO, 1 teaspoon of cayenne is A WHOLE LOT! I don't think I've ever used that much in ANY recipe.

[htuttle]

10. It's part of a dry rub on the fish

The heat of the skillet seems to take some of the heat out of the cayenne, so it's not unbearably hot. Of course, when it left the cayenne, it went right up into the air...

[elleng]

11. I'm glad you 'taught' this lesson!

Living with a Pakistani, most of whose cooking is too hot for me, I'll cook with this in mind!

Good idea, I think, for me to do fish!

[pengillian101]

5. I had the same experience!

The recipe said to get the cast iron skillet screaming hot, first of all. I used a Cajun seasoning on the catfish that our guests brought. It was the same thing you had after a few minutes. Smoke absolutely billowed out the open doors and windows. Good thing our guests were level headed about the whole thing, lol.

But, it sure tasted good!

[Stinky The Clown]

6. You experienced the culinary equivalent of pepper spray

Capsicum is mean shit.

[Warpy]

8. That reminds me of a certain Chinese recipe I did for friends

It was snowing like hell, so I couldn't take the gas ring out onto their deck, so I tossed the 8 dried Thai peppers into the blisteringly hot oil down in the basement.

When I got upstairs, it was pandemonium. Everybody: the adults, the kids and the cats were coughing furiously. Windows were being flung open while more wood was shoved into the woodstove. When everybody stopped coughing, they agreed the food couldn't be beat.

[TreasonousBastard]

12. I do that all the time when stir frying. And I just...

did it to myself again tonight-- cayenne, chili powder, dried pepper seeds and a coughing fit like I still smoked.

Dinner was good, though, and worth the slight inconvenience.

(The cats know to stay out of the kitchen at the first sign of the tear gas attack)