To Hell and Back: ABC News Producer Samples Spicy Chicken Wings

CHICAGO, Feb. 1, 2008— -- I really cannot handle spicy food. My ancestors came over on the Mayflower, to give you a sense of my cultural cuisine. The spiciest I can go is mustard on my Fenway Frank. But when I heard about the chicken wings at Jake Melnick's Corner Tap in Chicago, I was intrigued. They claim to be the spiciest anyone has ever eaten. The journalist in me wondered, "How do they make them so hot? Do they taste good? And most important, who on earth orders these?" So ABC News correspondent Eric Horng and I hopped on a plane to investigate.

At the restaurant, chef Eric Kelly shared the recipe that he, chef Robin Rosenberg and the rest of the team at Jake's have spent two years developing. They take habanero peppers, roast them and puree them in a blender. They then add that to their original hot wings sauce (which is top secret). The key to the Seriously Ridiculously Over-the-Top Hot Wings is adding a touch of one of the world's hottest peppers -- the red savina. The chefs at Jake's import an extract of the red savina from New Delhi, India. All it takes is five drops of the potent liquid into the secret sauce. Mix in 10 wings, and you get, well, my worst nightmare in a basket.

Since I made it all the way out there (and I wasn't ready yet to brave the 5 degree weather outside) I figured I'd stay and try one. Besides, how could I accurately report on these wings without trying at least one? Before I ordered I had to sign a waiver eliminating any liability on the part of the restaurant in case of injury, like irritating my eyes, burning my palate or suffering extreme stomach pains.

No turning back now. At first, it didn't seem so bad. What was all the fuss about? But after about 30 seconds my tongue began to burn and my lips were on fire. My face turned bright red, and I started to sweat. Tears started welling up in my eyes. It took only two bites before I rang for help -- Jake's gives each customer who orders its new super spicy wings a bell if you can't take the heat. Once you ring the bell, a server arrives within seconds with a platter of foods that best cut the burn: ice cream, a shot of milk, white bread, sour cream and orange slices. After 30 minutes my lips finally stopped stinging.

Those were the first two, and last two bites I would ever take. The servers at Jake's told us a man had ordered 22 wings the night before to celebrate his 40th birthday, setting a new record at the restaurant. I couldn't figure it out. Who would choose to go through such pain while eating a meal?

So we drove over to Hyde Park to discuss it with John Cacciopo. He is a psychology professor at the University of Chicago and studies the social and neural mechanisms underlying complex human behavior through a field he calls social neuroscience. He explained that the physiological responses our bodies go through are a response to a pain stimulus.

So was that man who ate 22 hot wings a masochist? Not necessarily, Cacioppo says. It isn't the pain they enjoy, but the release of endorphins that's so appealing, much like a runner's high. When the pain subsides, we enjoy the "reward of relief" and feel better than we even did before. Cacioppo also explained how some people may want to order these hot wings on a date, as you may interpret your sweating and heart-pounding as attraction.

"There's something called misattribution of arousal," Cacioppo told us. "There's a very clever study where they looked at males as they either were about to cross a footbridge over a gorge, or after. And they subsequently rated how attractive was this coed who would interview them. If they had crossed the footbridge, which is a scary kind of bridge, so now the person's walked across and their heart's pounding, they thought the person was more attractive, more appealing than before. And it's because they have this aroused state, they don't know what it's due to; there's this obviously attractive coed, and so they attribute it to that individual. In the case of hot wings, you can imagine how with a date, they're both aroused, they don't know necessarily that it's due to the food or the pain associated with having eaten it, so they attribute it to each other and so it's a more enjoyable date."

Good to know. As if Cacioppo wasn't a scientific enough authority, there is actually a Chili Pepper Institute in New Mexico. It can measure the spiciness of a pepper and rate it on the Scoville Scale, a scientific scale that measures spiciness based on the stimulation of the skin's chemoreceptors. We sent a sample of the extract they use at Jake's to be analyzed at the institute. The results blew us away. The red savina sample measured at 407,156 Scoville Heat Units. To give you some perspective, that's almost twice as hot as a habanero, and more than 65 times a jalapeno.

While my adventure with culinary sky-diving was something I will remember forever, I think the most daring I will get from here on out is an extra stick of Big Red.