Jalapeno Burn
I’m almost embarrassed to tell this story, but hey, there may be people out there as clueless as me about cooking with/handling jalapeno peppers. I learned it the hard way last night and I want to prevent others from having to go through it. While the following blog entry is sort of a crybaby’s whining, it is also a spreading of information for the otherwise clueless. So the story goes…

I made a stuffed jalapeno dish last night similar to one that my mom makes every so often. She cores the jalapeno peppers and stuffs them with fish or shrimp paste. Since RF likes spicy food, I thought I’d try making that dish.

I cut up about 10-12 large jalapeno peppers. Cored and seeded them. Stuff them with a mackerel paste I bought from R99. Then I pan fried all of them on high heat and added oyster sauce, garlic power, minced onions, and chicken bouillon for flavor. The dish came out pretty tasty and spicy. Just like mom’s.

BUT! Of course there’s a “BUT” with an “!”. This is an “almost embarrassing” story remember? So what did I do wrong to turn this otherwise happy story of a successful cooking venture sad? The answer is… I handled the jalapenos with my bare hands all through the cutting, coring, seeding, and stuffing process. 3 hours later my hands started burning...intensely. It felt like a 1st degree burn. Not that I know what a 1st degree burn feels like, but it might as well have been a 1st degree burn. My hands were just flaming with heat. To clarify, my hands FELT like they were burning and in heat. But in actuality they weren’t any higher in temperature than the rest of my body. RF touch my hands and he said it felt normal. But to me, my hands were surrounded by fire.

I put ice on them to soothe them but that served only as a temporary relief, not a cure. Another thing that gave me instant relief was running it under cold water. But less than a minute after I took my hands out from under the faucet and my hands began to dry, the burning came back again. RF and I had no idea what to do to take the burning sensation away. I thought of tiger balm, but we didn’t have any. RF offered to go to the drug store to get me some. But right before he was about to leave, he decided to look online for information regarding this type of burning. Sure enough he found a plethora of information regarding this thing called a Jalapeno Burn.

The first link that came up on the search was, believe it or not, Yahoo Answers. Apparently a lot of fellow Yahoo users had suffered this condition before and wrote about it on this site. Isn’t the WWW amazing? Anywa, back to the subject. RF read about several home remedies people suggested for dealing with Jalapeno burns. Many of them suggested soaking and washing the affected area with milk. Milk acts as a base to counter the acid in the oil of the pepper. So he poured some milk into a large bowl for me to soak my hands for 5 minutes. I did as the “doctors” ordered. After that I rinsed my hands in cold water. A minute later the burning came back.

Next he read that rubbing alcohol helps to wash the oil away. Someone on Yahoo Answers said he called the paramedics and the paramedics washed his hands out with rubbing alcohol. RF confirmed this method by looking at some paramedic site. So he poured rubbing alcohol into the bowl for me to soak and wash. 5 minutes of soaking and a rinse later, the burning sensation came back.

Next he read that vinegar also helps to dissolve the pepper oil. You guessed it, 5 minutes of soaking in vinegar and a rinse with water. Same result. Burning came back.

As I was about to give up and decided to give sleeping a try, he said a lot of people also suggested coating my hands with a mixture created with baking soda and water. He made me the pasty mixture and I coated my hands with it. I didn’t leave it on too long because the grainy texture of the baking soda did not do anything to taper off the heat. My hands were so tender and sensitive at that point that the grains felt 100% larger that they were. So I quickly rinsed off my hands and declared a lost battle.

I went to bed with stockings on my hands to prevent myself from rubbing my face in the middle of the night. The last thing I wanted was to transfer the oil from my hands to my face or eyes. No more than 5 minutes after I got into bed, my hands were flaming like mad. There was no way I could’ve slept with the burn. RF pulled the stockings off my hands saying I need to let my hands breathe.

Unable to sleep, I went out to the living room to apply an ice pack on my hands once again and laid on the couch to watch TV. I usually fall asleep watching TV so I was hoping that might do the trick. But it didn’t. The burning was too intense. I got up every half an hour to run cold water on my hands. By about 1am I made RF go to sleep without me. He wanted to stay up with me and keep me company. But knowing how tired he gets at work if he doesn’t get enough sleep, and knowing that the top CEOs of his company are in town this week from their parent company Australia, I told him he needs his rest. Since there wasn’t anything he could do to help my situation anyway, better just one person lose sleep over it than two. He reluctantly listened to me and went to sleep.

I continued to ice my hands and intermittently ran cold water over them for another 2 hours or so. It finally got too cold in the living room and I became really sleepy. So I took a brand new ice pack with me and crawled into bed. It was difficulty to refrain from moving too much in fear of waking up RF. Through the rest of the night I heard the neighbors’ automatic sprinklers spraying and by early morning, I heard a car pull up and then several thump thumps. It was the newspaper person tossing newspapers to people’s doorsteps. That was the first time I heard the newspaper delivery person while living in this apartment.

Eventually I fell asleep. I had no idea I fell asleep until I heard my alarm clock. I estimate I got about 1.5 hours to 2 hours of sleep. RF was still sleeping when I dozed off and he usually wakes up an hour before me. From that I am positive I got at least an hour of sleep. But how much more than that? I’m not sure. When I came to, my hands felt warm. The hot burning sensation had subsided to a warm feeling. As I got up to get ready for work, everything I touched felt amplified. The ribbed cap on the tube of toothpaste felt like rough sandpaper. My tea thermos felt hotter than it normally does. Even at work right now, freshly printed paper from the printer feels hot to my touch. My hands, especially my finger tips, are extremely tender and sensitive right now. But at least it’s not burning anymore.

From about 9:30pm when my hands started feeling the effects of the jalapeno burn to now, it has been a long 13 hours. The most intense feeling probably subsided about 7 hours into the ordeal. That’s a very very long time to endure such excruciating pain. But to think of it the “glass half-full” way, RF read on those links that most people cited 18 hours for the pepper oil to dissolve/evaporate out of the body. I guess I shouldn’t be complaining compared to them. But I did suffer through the night. So I am entitled to complain for as least a bit. In this case, for almost 3 blog pages worth.

To those of you who know about jalapeno burns and feel I was stupid to have handled them with my bare hands, stop laughing. To those of you who didn’t know such pain can come from cooking with jalapenos, beware and be warned. Don’t make the same mistake I did.