Working with Chilies

Thais love chilies, and like most people around the world who enjoy cooking and eating spicy-hot food, they do not consider them dangerous. They treat them with great respect and care, as they do sharp knives and hot stoves. Just as Western cooks learn early on to use hot pads to fetch a cake pan from the oven and to hold their fingers out of the way when using a sharp knife, people in chili-loving places learn to handle chilies with care. They use their bare hands when buying, cutting, chopping, grinding, and roasting fresh and dried chilies. No rubber or plastic gloves in sight. I use my bare hands to handle chilies, and I try very hard to avoid touching my eyes when I have recently done so, as I do not like the wild burning feeling I get when I forget this important kitchen rule. But just as I still, after all these years in the kitchen, burn myself while handling a hot cookie sheet or nick my finger with a knife, I occasionally do touch my eyes with chili fingers. It hurts a lot, and I don’t like it one bit. Then it stops burning, and I get back to cooking. Naturally, anyone with allergies or strong sensitivity to chilies should take great precautions, but for most of us, the thing to do is to make sensible chili-handling part of our culinary knowledge.