Original subtitles

We are what we eat.

This is the oldest and truest recipe I know of.

By that measure,

I'm a bushel of blackberries picked as a child in the meadows of Macedonia.

I'm also wild garlic, foraged as a young chef

from the forest floor along the coast of Denmark.

I'm a pinch of salt skimmed from distant tides,

powered by the mineral that has shaped society for millennia.

All of these bites have brought me here, to noma, my restaurant in Copenhagen,

where I've spent the last 20 years on a journey with my team

to learn everything we can about the ingredients that feed us.

But ingredients do more than feed us.

They bind and divide us.

They decipher and define us.

They fuel economies,

power politics,

and unlock hidden truths about who we are and where we're going.

This is the story of everyday items

that have changed the world in ways most of us have never considered.

Add them all up, and you get a recipe for humanity.

At the heart of that recipe, is an ingredient

that forever burned in my mind the transformative powers of food,

and that's where this journey begins.

When I was growing up in Macedonia,

I remember the men in our village that carried chile in their pockets.

We'd gather around the table for long feasts,

and in between bites of roast chicken and rice,

they'd take tiny nibbles from the spicy peppers.

I was captivated by this strange ingredient

and how something so small can be so powerful.

It felt like a gateway to a world I knew nothing about.

For years afterwards, I dreamed of chile.

What would it do to me?

What mysteries would this strange ingredient unravel?

What waited for me on the other end of that first taste

of chile?

Chiles were born here in the Amazon basin millions of years ago.

Beautiful and seductive as chiles may be, they probably sting for a reason.

To keep hungry animals from destroying the precious seeds inside.

One of nature's genius designs.

The animal world responded and left chiles alone.

Well, not all animals.

Birds.

The only species impervious to the burn of capsaicin.

The other animal, us. Humans.

Mobile, resourceful and gluttons for punishment.

In the beaks of birds and the bellies of boats,

chile spread from its birthplace in the Amazon across the planet.

In 1493, Columbus returned with tidings of a new world

and a handful of pepper plants.

By the 1500s,

the Portuguese brought chiles to the Far East and changed food forever.

Five hundred years later,

and this spicy fruit has become part of our identity.

A taste of what it means to be human,

to experience pain in pursuit of pleasure,

to always push our limits.

How hot is a chile pepper?

Dr. Wilbur Scoville wanted to know back in 1912,

so he diluted the chiles with sugar-water

and counted how many drops it took before the burn went away.

This became the method for measuring the heat in all chiles.

The Scoville scale.

This is a trip from the mildest foothills to the spiciest peaks

where every stop reveals a new layer of heat,

a new relationship to spice,

and a new dimension of us.

The Serbian string pepper, commonly used to make paprika

is part of the most ubiquitous species of chiles, Capsicum annuum.

At just 250 Scoville units,

this mild, fruity pepper is more of a kiss than a bite.

In the heart of Serbia,

not far from the dinner table where I first discovered chile,

you'll find a place where peppers dominate daily life.

The village is called Donja Lokošnica,

and each of its 1,200 citizens

produce an average of three tons of paprika peppers a year.

Dried in great, red theater curtains on every sun-exposed surface in town.

For the people of this tight-knit community,

paprika is not a powder that gathers dust in the pantry,

but a vibrant spice that colors their identity and powers their survival.

The people from Lokošnica can't imagine

life without the string pepper.

WELCOME TO THE KINGDOM OF PAPRIKA

The pepper is the best here in Lokošnica.

We gave our seeds to other villages.

The string pepper couldn't grow there.

I don't know why.

Maybe this land is somewhat special. Maybe it's the climate.

Something has to be special.

Let's get another one.

Women usually do the stringing. Men know how to do it, but they don't.

It's too hard for them.

My right shoulder still hurts.

We use garlands to dry our peppers.

We string it traditionally.

The pepper business is more than a full-time job.

So, we don't stop.

The main producers are Marina and Boban. They are my daughter and son-in-law.

Tell Boban he can unload it now. There's enough space.

They are in charge.

And my grandson Danijel works with them too.

Shake it a little.

Every generation of my family were farmers.

My grandfather, father and others were all involved.

So I'm going to continue it as well.

I started working with my family when I was in eighth grade.

I help them as much as I can.

It's not easy.

My husband, older son, and I are always in the field.

We are busy around the clock.

Should we roast some more?

I was born into peppers.

I've spent my whole life with peppers, and I make a living from peppers.

I have to learn how to do this.

You will learn, but first you have to get rid of those long nails.

As the saying goes, I was raised on peppers and lard.

There are stories that the pepper came from South America...

and they left it to be handed down from generation to generation.

Sometimes we do stuffed peppers,

or minced, or we grind them up for barbecue.

The pot has to go on the stove so we can fry ajvar.

We worry deeply about the next 15 to 20 years.

Young people are not keen on doing agriculture in general.

They are getting other jobs.

Year after year, we have fewer producers.

Should I add sugar and salt?

Yes, add them.

It's delicious.

This is so good.

Amazing.

Let's eat.

Good ajvar...

Young people are leaving and going to work in companies.

Farming is tough, physical work.

And the profit is small.

They don't want to farm anymore.

They would rather work in business.

Most of my peers would never do this.

I've also tried to work in a company.

But it was just not for me.

This is a critical moment in our food system.

As small family growers struggle to compete with industrial farms,

Danijel's generation will be the one to decide

the fate of some of our most important ingredients

and treasured traditions.

My son has a genuine interest in agriculture.

It's never difficult for him to work.

I am really glad for him to stay if that's what he wants.

I told him, "It will be your decision, and we'll support you."

He will choose his destiny.

This pepper is of superb quality,

and it would be a shame if we don't preserve it.

Ladies and gentlemen,

dear guests from the villages and from afar,

welcome to the Sixteenth Paprika Day Festival.

This day is dedicated to one of the most famous vegetables in the region:

the renowned Leskovac paprika pepper.

For centuries,

this village has kept the ancient recipe of cultivation alive

and produces the juiciest and healthiest paprika in the world.

We've joined together

to improve the quality and quantity,

and above all to struggle less and live longer.

I believe that this is better for me.

I'd like to continue what my family has been doing for years.

In its purest form,

the tiny, shiny tabasco pepper hits at 50,000 Scoville units.

This is a force to be reckoned with.

And yet most people will only taste the tabasco pepper

in its milder liquid form.

Y'all ready?

- Y'all ready? - Yeah, let's go then.

If somebody started off making a rival sauce today using our method,

they would not be able to sell any sauce for about five years.

No. Actually, we didn't pick this little piece.

As we say, from seed to sauce it takes five years.

That includes the three year aging process.

It's a time-honored tradition, and we're not just saying that.

I grew up between Macedonia

and one of the least spicy countries in the world, Denmark.

Love it or loathe it, for many years Tabasco was the only game in town.

A gateway to a spicier world.

I doubt anyone had a clue about the source of this mysterious red sauce.

This is the story of the family and their 150-year-old recipe

from a southern Louisiana salt marsh that helped set the world on fire.

It takes a very special island A very special sun

And some very special peppers To make the one

Tabasco, Tabasco

The original liquid pepper seasoning

Some people think that Tabasco means every pepper sauce,

which just isn't the case.

There is only one Tabasco,

the original liquid pepper sauce made at Avery Island, Louisiana.

So, Edmund McIlhenny, the inventor of Tabasco,

kept meticulous records by nature.

This is one of two notebooks containing memos about his outgoing mail.

Well, one of these, right here,

to Hugh Auchincloss in New York City on January 18th, 1868,

it says, "thanking him for a lens for my microscope,

and sending him a bottle of my Tabasco pepper sauce,"

you know, as a token of thanks.

That's the earliest known reference to Tabasco sauce by name.

The family tradition is that Edmund, after the Civil War,

he comes back to the island, we think he starts tending the family garden.

And knowing that peppers spoil pretty quickly once you pick them,

you have to grind them and mix them with a little bit of salt,

or they're spoiled.

So we think that he did that, plus he added some vinegar.

It's the same way that you create sauerkraut.

He started making this pepper sauce for the family table.

Around 1890, you see the company getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

We're in 195 countries and territories around the world.

We're in 35 languages and dialects.

Unlike a lot of other iconic brands,

Tabasco is still made by the family of its inventor.

- Tabasco. - Tabasco.

Tabasco

Today, we allow the pepper mash to ferment naturally.

It's aged for up to three years.

And that fermentation process really kicks into high gear in the summer.

We want the warehouses over a hundred degrees out there in the summer,

because that really kick-starts the fermentation process.

It really mellows the flavor of the mash.

And then it's ready for the next stage.

The smell was the toughest part to get used to.

So that was a lot of, like, runny nose, red eyes when you goin' home.

So I guess over time, you...

I guess Tabasco kinda goes in your blood.

I don't get those specks anymore, my nose don't run.

Red sauce, I would say, is kind of like a fine wine.

The art of it is the aging process.

That's what separates us from a lot of other people.

And, you know, in our world, and everybody wants it fast...

to sit back and wait to make it perfect

for the customer and for our families that's eating it,

is pretty unique.

You can't rush the process. You can't make it go faster.

The mash tell you when it's ready.

When you walk into the building

and you see us skimming and making Tabasco sauce,

it's not rushed. There's a art to doing it.

Every barrel is touched. Every barrel is taken care of.

Every barrel is checked. Each barrel has to go through each person's hands

to make sure it gets done.

Our CEO too, he comes through

and he inspects the barrels every morning.

We'll walk through all 96 barrels every day.

Part of my job and part of every CEO's job

has been to go down and inspect the mash before we make sauce.

It's hard to explain 'cause when you tell so much,

when you stick that scoop down into the mash

and you lift it up, and you smell it. It's so quick, like you...

There are so many different notes that you're looking for.

You know, this is oaky, this is woody, this is green,

this is fresh, this is yeasty.

Tabasco is not meant to take away from what you're cooking.

It's meant to see you... For you to still have your voice through your food,

but we just make it louder.

No migrating bird, no Portuguese explorer has

influenced chile's world dominance as much as the rise of hot sauces.

For hundreds of years, disparate cultures across the globe

have been pounding and puréeing chiles into flavor enhancers.

But the past few decades have seen the transformation of

hot sauce culture into an arms race,

flooding our pantries with hotter and hotter expressions of

this fiery Amazonian fruit.

The appeal is obvious.

Hot sauce allows anyone to be a cook at the table.

Dabbing, painting or soaking each bite in concentrated blasts of spice.

Tabasco.

When you get that bottle in your hand,

and you know you done had a part in making that, that people love

not only in your own community but in the whole world,

is a pretty humbling feeling to have.

That you was a part of something that goes all over the world that people love.

Don't be fooled by this unassuming fruit, Prik Kee Noo.

At 100,000 Scoville units,

this little pepper packs the kind of spice

that blurs the line between pleasure and pain.

Few cuisines burn hotter than the food of Bangkok.

And few chefs know more about the power of capsaicin than Prin Polsuk.

A quiet giant from the north of Thailand who conquered the kitchens of Bangkok

cooking some of the spiciest dishes on the planet.

A man possessed by the powers of chile.

None more than this tiny time bomb,

Prik Kee Noo, the "Mouse Shit Pepper."

The chile at the heart of it all.

This is a love story between a country boy and a city girl.

An unlikely love forged in the flames of a shared chile obsession.

On nights off, Prin and his wife Mint play a dangerous game,

chase the chile.

A restaurant crawl across the city

in search of some of the spiciest dishes they can find.

Mint is from Bangkok.

I'm a son of farmers.

Given where I'm from, I never thought I'd meet someone like her.

What makes us see each other is food.

When I first met him, I thought,

"Hey, is this the famous chef everyone's talking about?"

But when I saw him, I thought, "He looks like a football player or something."

Once he started talking, the words that came out of his mouth made me think,

"Hey, this guy is actually very interesting."

Everything he said synced with my heartbeat.

- We're here. Thank you. - Thank you.

- Let's go. - Thank you.

Auntie Moo.

- Yes, hello. - Good evening.

- How are you, Auntie? - I'm fine, honey. Feeling great.

Can I sit here?

What would you like to eat?

What should we eat in the rain?

- It's raining, we should drink beer. - Rain brings bad people together.

- You have eel, please cook it. - All right. Will do.

- And deep-fried frog with garlic. - Yes.

Snakehead entrail Tom Yum?

Make it spicy too.

You should use more chile than eel.

Can I help you?

Please.

Make it so spicy that I sneeze.

So extreme.

As you wish.

Auntie Moo's place is not like a restaurant to me.

She reminds me of my grandmother from when I was young.

Okay. Smells so good.

Now let's sprinkle some hot chiles on here.

And some very delicious peppercorn.

Here is our restaurant's signature dish: stir-fried eel with chile.

Looks yummy.

Smell good?

- Nice smell. - Okay, try it, kids.

- We can eat now, right? - Let's try it.

- Let's try. - Here is its head.

Are the chiles okay?

Very delicious.

Spicy, spicy, spicy.

- Is it spicy? - Yes.

- Cheers. - Cheers.

Thank you.

It is said that when we eat spicy food,

once the heat passes we will be happy.

- True, isn't it? - It's true.

Like having sex.

So naughty.

- Really? - Yes.

My first time in Thailand was a shock to my taste buds.

I'd never experienced food so consistently spicy.

But in a country filled with bold flavors,

the food from Isaan in Thailand's northeastern corner stands out.

It's pungent, full of acidity, powerful, alive with capsaicin.

Eating Isaan cuisine is a full contact sport.

Not the kind of food most would consider safe territory for a first date.

Our first date was not fine dining.

I wanted to take her out to Isaan street food.

The restaurant was on the roadside.

But I was afraid she wouldn't like Isaan food.

Okay. We're here.

Thank you, sir.

- Good evening. - Hello, hello. Hi.

What should we have?

Papaya salad?

Bitter raw meat, spicy salad like before and roasted meat. Okay.

Now chile has become part of our eating experience.

And it all started right here.

Here it comes.

Thank you.

- Thank you. - This is great.

On our first date, I couldn't believe it.

Mint was eating larb with raw meat, blood and everything.

Right then, I was like, "I love her."

Is it that bad?

Cheers!

Bite by bite, burn by burn, they build a world together.

Including tonight's last stop Samrub Samrub Thai,

Prin and Mint's new restaurant.

A chile-stained love letter to the ancient cuisine of Thailand.

- Hi, everyone! - Hi.

- Hey! Hello. - Hello.

I'm going to cook jungle curry for everyone.

Make it spicy please.

- Spicy? - Yes, very spicy.

- Do you really want something spicy? - Very spicy. Yeah.

I'll go cook.

The first ingredient for me is always chile.

But how spicy?

Spicy with fun? Or spicy to be hated?

Oh, that's spicy.

Chiles...

make everything have more dimension.

Pound chiles for me, please.

Pounded chiles. It's not spicy enough.

The more we use spice, the more we add sweetness.

The more we add salt.

The more we add other tastes like bitterness and astringents.

Everything is for balancing that spicy taste.

Chiles are a main ingredient in all our food.

We put chiles in almost every dish

except for dessert.

Somebody always cries,

and somebody makes fun of their friend.

People don't hide anything. They show themselves.

Crying.

I feel that it helps break the ice and drop people's ego.

I know you want a lot of gang.

It's the last one ever. I keep... I keep some.

What I'm doing now with my food

is connecting people.

I want people to go home with happiness.

That's all I want.

Months ago, I planted chile seeds as an experiment.

The Bhut Orange Copenhagen, a variation of the ghost pepper,

is the spiciest thing we've ever grown at noma.

At 800,000 Scoville units,

these are part of a class of chiles known as the superhots.

The spiciest ingredients on earth.

This is uncharted territory.

Where each bite pushes us beyond what we once thought was possible.

When I look at these chiles in front of me now,

and I know they are crazy spicy, I get a childish fear again.

Like, I don't want it, but the same time I'm also like, can I take it?

Can I actually do this?

I mean, it is daunting to think that this tiny, little thing,

if you're not used to it, can give you a lot of pain.

It's scary.

And then with each Scoville level you get to master,

you also get to enjoy the flavor.

And you just get even more addicted to spice.

Chile kind of takes over your mind.

Hey, maybe they're taking over us right now.

Slowly but surely, it's a long-term plan.

"Chile's saying, "Hey, let's get the humans addicted to this,

so we'll survive and we'll be planted all over the world."

At noma, every moment, every technique, every ingredient is carefully considered.

But the hottest chiles are the opposite.

Raw and untamed, they force us to let our guard down,

to tap into something deeper inside of us.

I've always wondered what would happen

if you served one of the world's hottest peppers at noma.

If only for a night.

Kenneth, it's time for service.

- Meeting! - Yes!

Good evening, everyone.

Good evening.

Thanks for a fantastic Saturday service.

I'm so happy to say that this is the last week of the vegetarian season.

For the last week,

I thought we'd bring in a little surprise for our guests and for ourselves.

This here is called the Bhut Orange Copenhagen,

and it's a pepper that has been bred by a Danish man called Bjarne.

And it's hot. It's, like, seriously hot.

It's the hottest thing that's ever been bred in Denmark.

And I thought we'd serve it for the guests tonight.

But before that, I think we should taste it.

And yeah... Because how can we have something our guests are gonna try

that we haven't tried?

This is gonna be spicy, like seriously, seriously hot.

Forget about that jalapeño on your nachos.

This is a different league.

Yeah, so if you're not really up for it, don't worry about it. Just smell it.

But if you're up for it,

I really think that we're in for a ride.

So, go ahead.

Grab yourself a chile.

Go ahead.

Everyone can do this step.

Everybody got a pepper?

Yes.

Oy, I'm nervous. But...

Let's have a fantastic service.

Wow.

All right. Enjoy the ride.

What's the spiciest thing you've ever eaten?

Take a moment to think about this.

Do you remember how you felt? The detonation of your nervous system?

How the pain broke across your body?

The throbbing burn in your mouth as if you swallowed a firecracker?

"Will I ever be the same," you begin to wonder.

How badly you wanted to make it go away.

If you could go back to that fateful bite, would you do it all over again?

If you're anything like me, the answer is yes.

Wow.

You on... Yep, yep. Table number two.

We have a serving of two peppers for you. On the left-hand side...

On the right-hand side, a mild grilled Padrón.

On the left a Copenhagen Bhut.

Choose your weapon.

What makes us do this?

Researchers call it benign masochism,

the search for discomfort.

A collision of positive and negative feelings,

like roller coasters and horror movies, sad songs and Shakespeare.

We embrace the hurt.

What could be more human than playing with fire?

How much hotter can the world get?

- Oh, my God. - There appears to be no end in sight.

Where... Where is it... Where is it burning you?

- Everywhere. - Yeah.

But the most interesting thing about chiles isn't how they burn us.

It's how they bind us.

They built communities, fomented war, seeded revolution, aroused passions

and flooded countless brains with a warm tide of endorphins.

Not bad, for bird food.