condiment Why does salsa get hotter over time?

[PeriPeri]

Hey all,

So I chopped up all my summer's chillies and added olive oil, lemon juice, salt & pepper. Didn't cook the sauce... left chillies raw. This has been in my fridge for about two and a bit months now and surprisingly getting better with every day. What started out as raw chopped chillies (like a salsa) in olive oil has now turned into more like a sauce. It's all infused and just fantastic!

Now the thing is that I and friends that have tried first batches of this salsa, say it has gotten hotter with time. I have noticed this too. In fact I would say that the salsa I first bottled is now a good 20 - 30% hotter for sure.

Can anyone shed any logic or light on this one? Why would a salsa get hotter over time? Can anyone confirm this for me and give me an explanation please?

 

[OROZCONLECHE]

I Did Pico De Gallo and Used Habaneros The Next Week the Heat Was Totally Gone, about a month after That I Made it again and It Was a Decent Heat by the Next Week The Heat Was Almost Intolerable Im Not Sure Why Either but Someone Here Might

 

[Lucky Dog Hot Sauce]

My experience with hobby & production hot sauces is that they "mature" over a few weeks then stablize as well.

Salsa even moreso because the ingredients aren't usually cooked.

The reason is pretty simple: there's capsaicin oils in the peppers - the seeds and flesh. As it "mellows" in the oil or vinegar/brine, more oils are extracted. If you've added dried flakes of pepper and/or fresh pods chopped up, more and more the oils are going to be leached out of them.

When you first try it on a chip or whatever, you might get a little piece of hot pepper or you might get a few pieces. That, at the beginning, is going to determine how hot that bite is.

But after a week or so of stewing, that heat will be in every bite, as a lot of the capsaicin oils will have become uniformly saturated throughout the salsa - so your tomatoes, onions, and cilantro pieces will also burn.

My $.02


As for a habanero sauce getting milder, I have no explanation for that.

 

[PeriPeri]

Thanks for the feedback. Makes perfect sense or cents lol...