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Spiciest cuisine


Kent Wang

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In the West, many cuisines are spiced down to suit local tastes. But in their native lands, I would venture that Sichuan and Thai are the spiciest.

I haven't actually been to Sichuan, just neighboring Yunnan and Shaanxi, and find the local food so spicy that it's nearly impossible for a foreigner to tolerate without asking the restaurant to turn down the heat -- and then it's still really spicy!

I haven't been to Thailand, so that's just a guess based on what I've eaten in the US.

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I suspect you mean hot rather than spicy, Kent. For spicy Indian cuisines have few competitors.

I agree. I have never understood the association between "heat" and "spicy." I can think of few cuisines that use spices as extensively as Indian food, but not all Indian food I have had is hot, by any means.

OED defines "spicy" as:

1. Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of spice; of the nature of spice.

2. (As if) flavoured or fragranced with spice; pungent, aromatic; piquant.

Edited by sanrensho (log)
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If there was a question here, I seem to have missed it. I guess this thread is for commentary. I've been to Chengdu, and yes, it does taste different than here in the US. If you ever had hot pot in Chengdu, you would never say the food was not "spicy". You would also find it "hot" too, like many Indian dishes are, but that does not mean the food is not well-spiced.

You can get two decent types of good, spicy Hot Pot in Flushing NYC -- a Sichuan type and the type from Shandong/Shaanxi. But nothing like in China. And that doesn't help you in Austin.

The problem in the US is that "spicy" and "hot" have become interchangeable words to most people ordering local Chinese food. Ask your local Chinese place for spicy food, and they add just add some cheap chile oil to make it hot. And it doesn't help that 90% of the "Sichuan" Chinese restaurants in the US are run by Cantonese, who really have no idea what Sichuan or northern Chinese food is about.

Edited by Batard (log)

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Bhutanese is definitely a contender for hottest. The national dish is ema datse, green chilies cooked with cheese. Eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or all three. Hot chilies are used as a vegetable, not a mere small flavoring component. Depending on the heat of the particular chili, it ranges from very very hot to face-melting. Ema datse can also be made with torn up dried red chilies, or sometimes mushrooms, green beans, tomatoes, or other vegetables are added, but it is still always at least half chilies. Meat dished often have a generous portion of chilies added, and momo dumplings are usually eaten with a spicy ezay, or condiment of chilies, and usually tomato, onion, and garlic. People also eat ezay as a bar snack. They also use tinge, or szechuan pepper in some dishes.

It can be difficult to get a local restaurant to cook dishes with anywhere near the full amount of chili if you are foreign, a lot of places presume that we only want french fries. I like spicy food and can usually take the heat, but can eat only some of the food that the staff makes, sometimes it is just to painful, no matter how much rice you have to go along with it. A few Bhutanese have expressed to me that they would love to try to go work in the US, but are worried that we don't have chilies there and they wouldn't have anything to eat. I assure them that chilies and rice are widely available in many varieties, but I think they don't believe me.

Edited by pastrygirl (log)
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Koreans also eat raw chiles, but not so much as a main component of a meal as the Bhutanese do. We take spicy raw chiles and dip them in gochujang (hot chile paste which isn't that spicy) daejjang, or a combo of the two.

Korean food is spicy, but the stuff you eat at restaurants isn't as spicy as korean home cooking. I've had many a kimchi (made by my mother and her friends) that is made with fresh gochugaru that is WAY spicier than kimchi made with store bought gochugaru. Also one of the spiciest dishes I have ever eaten in my life was some nakji bokkeum that was made by a family friend. Delicious and painful.

Although I am sure there are many countries out there with even hotter cuisines

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