Cooking With Bear Spray? Here Is Some Bad Advice

Let's say you're camping in Wyoming and you want to add a little spice to your dinner, but you forgot to pack the spices.

Pepper spray, often used to ward off bears and even human attackers, is made from - well - PEPPERS.

Okay, so can you cook with it?

Do not confuse this with mace. That's made with something different.  There is a spice used for cooking that is called mace, but that is also something different.

The thought of using pepper spray for cooking came from the idea that the same hot pepper used in food can be made into a weapon.

Pepper spray is non-lethal, so ingesting it will not kill you. It's just damn hot.

The pepper spray that is sold for self-defense products is mixed with various aerosol propellants and other ingredients to make the spray formula. You might not want to ingest those things, but, again, they will not kill you.

Bears have been known to lick pepper spray off the ground after it has been used as a bear deterrent. The dye in most defense sprays should make your food really pretty, too.

Watch out for back-spray when you spray it into the pan. You’ll probably clear the kitchen, if not the whole house. It's nasty stuff when concentrated. I suggest that you spray your food outside.

People who have been curious enough to try cooking with pepper spray not that it does add a lot of heat to the food, but does not have much flavor.

While researching this story, yeah I did that, I found a website with a recipe for hot wings using pepper spray to add the ultimate heat to the dish. Read all about it at this link.