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which cuisine has the spiciest food?


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ON AVERAGE, Thai has to be the hottest I've had, although I've had individual Korean, Sichuan, and Indian dishes which have blown the top of my head off.

Mexican doesn't even come close--at least what I've had. Mind you I've had some fairly hot Mexican, but either "on average" or individually, it's almost always relying on much weaker peppers. The again, if solely based "on average", Korean isn't that hot either--it's only a few individual dishes that blow that trend.

Jamaican? I think I just haven't had the right food.

Jon Lurie, aka "jhlurie"

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I think that on the whole, it has to be either Thai or Indian (and there is some leeway here as to what subset of Indian cuisine we are talking about) that is the "Spiciest". However I would also say that TRUE Sichuan cusisine is probably much more aggressive than either of these two cuisines in usage of extracted and concentrated chili oils and frequently in combination with Sichuan Peppercorns will put you way over the top. True Hunan cuisine will also blow your head off if prepared authenically and to native heat levels.

It also depends on how you define spicy --there's complex use of spices (Indian food wins hands down, theres not a cuisine on this planet that comes even close to using as many spices in any particular dish as they use) and then you've got usage of chiles in different forms. Indian food uses dried and fresh chiles, but so does mexican and thai and chinese. Various chinese cuisines such as Hunan and Sichuan use extracted chili oils in combination with dried and fresh chiles in the same dish frequently. Malaysian and Indonesian food can be like this as well.

Indian Chinese is also unbeleiveably spicy -- take all the aspects of Sichuan or Hunan dried and fresh chili usage, along wih extracted oils, and combine it with heavy usage of spices... very dangerous indeed.

Jason Perlow, Co-Founder eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters

Foodies who Review South Florida (Facebook) | offthebroiler.com - Food Blog (archived) | View my food photos on Instagram

Twittter: @jperlow | Mastodon @jperlow@journa.host

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I think that on the whole, it has to be either Thai or Indian (and there is some leeway here as to what subset of Indian cuisine we are talking about)

It also depends on how you define spicy --there's complex use of spices (Indian food wins hands down, theres not a cuisine on this planet that comes even close to using as many spices in any particular dish as they use)  and then you've got usage of chiles in different forms.

jason, others,

vikram may or may not agree (though i suspect he will) but to talk about "indian" food as such is to engage in a tradition of generalization that a site like egullet should help dispel.

despite what indian restaurants in the u.s would have us believe there are many indian cuisines and some of them don't use very many spices at all--and some aren't hot at all. thus there's no "they" there. there are cuisines that have almost no resemblance whatsoever to each other. there is i suppose a "mughlai" cuisine (an almost entirely restaurant animal) offshoots of which flourish in england and the u.s which could claim a certain pan-indian scope (in the same way that english, spoken by <5% of the population does among languages) but to generalize about "indian" food from that example is not a good idea. it would be like making generalized statements about "chinese" food (which i note you don't do, taking care to break it further into hunan, sichuan and so on) on the basis of what's found on the average american-chinese menu. it would be good if awareness of indian food on this site reached the levels that awareness of certain other cuisines have.

we're all guilty of this phenomenon i suppose--i've been talking about "thai" as a fairly homogeneous thing; for all i know there's regional variations of thai food that are completely different from what i've experienced--i have heard that thai royal cuisine, is far less spicy/hot than regular thai cuisine. i'd be glad to be informed further.

in a spirit of constructive criticism,

mongo

(edit to add the sentence in italics)

Edited by mongo_jones (log)
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As you can see, I was trying to address that very issue of generalization. However to be fair, most of these cuisines are not seen outside of India, so its very hard for most of us to talk about specific genres of Indian food from lesser known provinces without actually having experienced it.

Jason Perlow, Co-Founder eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters

Foodies who Review South Florida (Facebook) | offthebroiler.com - Food Blog (archived) | View my food photos on Instagram

Twittter: @jperlow | Mastodon @jperlow@journa.host

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As you can see, I was trying to address that very issue of generalization. However to be fair, most of these cuisines are not seen outside of India, so its very hard for most of us to talk about specific genres of Indian food from lesser known provinces without actually having experienced it.

don't want to split hairs over this but i'd suggest that the second sentence quoted in my post above lapses back into the kind of generalization the first one tries to get away from.

india has states not provinces, by the way. and the food in most american indian restaurants isn't really from any particular region or state. in india it is a simulacrum of what "indians like to go out to eat"--though this is changing. in the u.s it has achieved a certain material reality. hopefully, this will slowly begin to change too (though the news from england, where there's far more indians and other south asians, doesn't sound promising).

i think one of the good things about sites like egullet is that it allows us to gain a wider view of things we haven't had the chance to experience yet. i, for one, don't have a lot of experience with french food but know better now than to think that they eat the same things or cook the same way in provence and alsace (or do they?). there is a certain tradition of thinking and writing about indian food in this country (conditioned certainly by the food that is actually available) that is a little hard to get out of.

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Mongo, it could be logically argued that Alsatian and Provencal food are radically different from one another, as well. Many countries have highly divergent regional styles. Perhaps we could discuss this in another thread. It might be an interesting discussion.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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Mongo, it could be logically argued that Alsatian and Provencal food are radically different from one another, as well. Many countries have highly divergent regional styles. Perhaps we could discuss this in another thread. It might be an interesting discussion.

pan,

i thought that was the point i was making. perhaps i wasn't clear. and perhaps a separate discussion would be good: on the whole question of whether national designations are particularly useful markers for cuisines from heterogeneous countries? why don't you start it?

mongo

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I think most world travellers who have eaten "local" food around the world and not just "restaurant" food in each country would universally agree...

Thai overall, throughout the country would be the hottest/most spicy, as mentioned above, due mostly in part to those unassuming tiny Thai chili peppers.

:smile:

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What is 'spiciest' may be a matter of what you're used to - an exotic spicy dish probably has more impact than the spicy food Mom used to make.

It would be hard for me to pick a spiciest. I routinely eat (oh yeah, and work - my boss will probably read this) in Korea, Thailand, China, Vietnam and now India. I consider many local foods here spicy, but not over the top explosive. But I've had a few dishes at 'Cajun' (note the quotes) restuarants in North America that were so hot that I - who used to eat raw Thai chilies - found them totally inedible. If I based my judgement solely on that, I'd say Cajun food is the spiciest, which I think we would all agree it's not.

By contast, the few Sichuan meals I've had in the US were relatively bland, nothing like Sichuan food in China. I can't see anyone saying Sichuan food is the hottest based on the USA version.

I agree with the earlier comments about what the Brits have done to Indian food in general, and vindaloo - originally a fairly subtle dish - in particular. Generic 'Indian' food is now served inedibly hot to drunken soccer fans all over the world. It's a great way to get rid of any dodgy meat in the kitchen. And they never notice that the staff are actually Bangladeshi or Pakistani. :biggrin:

The hottest dish I've ever eaten was a Jamacian jerk chicken in a homemade habanero sauce. It was delicious, but at the same time so hot that my brain seemed to disconnect for several seconds after I put it in my mouth. I am now very, very careful around habaneros.

- Hong Kong Dave

Hong Kong Dave

O que nao mata engorda.

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To anyone who doubts in the fieriness of their food, just go down to an asian market and pick up a package of "shin ramyon" and prepare it using the entire spice packet.

I do that all the time. That stuff's childs play.

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I haven't eaten Bhutanese food, but its reputed to be total dynamite mainly because their national dish of emadashi consists of curried chillies. Yes, that's right, not chillies in a curry, but chillies are the curry.

I went to Bhutan for a couple of weeks about two years ago and ate quite a lot of emadashi. It's not curried chillis, it's a side dish which consists of chillis boiled in water and then thickened with goats cheese. It's very good but very very hot.

The strange thing is that although the Bhutaneese do eat a lot of chilli, they aren't particulalry hardened to it's effects and so they all sweat a lot and complain when eating emadashi.

For the sake of completenes, Thai is the spiciest cuisine I've eaten. Bhutanese and Anglo Indian have some hot dishes but Thai food (especially in Thailand) has some staggeringly hot dishes and very little of it has no chillis.

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Don't Chili peppers originate from Mexico and the Central and Southern Americas? I find that most Indian and Asian cooks use the same type of small Tabasco-like pepper just to enhance flavour ... or kill the dish. It usually doesn't add anything else than heat. Now, if you get used to the heat, take a trip to Oaxaca or Jalisco, Mexico and plurge into their very intricate use of up to 300 varieties of chilis. Hot AND flavorful...and you can learn how to appreciate the different tastes. The hottest dish I ever had was in a bar in Tepic (Nayarit, Mexico): just plain old pickled veggies that locals were eating like they were dill pickles. I had the hiccups for two days (I have no problem eating fresh serranos or jalapenos by themselves).

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Two items:

Ate whole roasted habaneros with goat cheese, indian fry bread, etc., and made it through one and a half before going to the bathroom to cry. I wasn't just tearing up, it hurt. Really, the Scoville units on those...

Had a Thai soup the other day that I couldn't choke down. It immediately made the insides of my cheeks burn. I wasted $8.50 on that soup.

I'm not sure if nationality is the issue here. Seems like you could make anything hotter than hell. If it's part of a cuisine then that's fine, but so often restaurants will cater to thrill seekers. I've heard about a Thai place in Portland (OR) that offers 1 - 20 stars. Authentic Thai heat, maybe, but not for Oregonians. If you get 18 stars are you really in it for the authenticity? 20 is just showing off.

It's hard to eat that stuff and think that it's the best representation of the food culture. What are the grandmothers in Thailand eating?

If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?

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you've hit upon a bizarre thing that happens to certain asian cuisines when certain anglos--perhaps smarting under the "can't eat spicy" stereotype--happen upon them. look at what's happened to indian food in england. or the number of people who at indian restaurants in the u.s say things like "make it spicy, like you eat it"--even when the dish in question is not meant to be spicy (of course indian restaurants don't help clarify matters by making everything available mild, medium, spicy).

that being said many indians, for example, do eat extremely spicy things--i've cited the example of my parents chomping raw, HOT, green chillies with their lunch with no visible effects. and from the little i ate in bangkok this winter i have no illusions that thai food needs no jazzing up to quickly become unfeasibly hot for me--the thai folks at the restaurants we were at seemed to be having no such issues. so palates do also differ.

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The spiciest meal I have had was at a restaurant in Minneapolis called Sri Lanka. It is no longer in business. Yet Sri Lanken food can be very spicy.

Also, the peppercorns at Gran Sichaun on West 51st has a tendency to numb my entire mouth to the extent that I feel as though I am at the dentist's office and have been given an injection in preparation for having my teeth drilled. :wacko:

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Also, the peppercorns at Gran Sichaun on West 51st has a tendency to numb my entire mouth to the extent that I feel as though I am at the dentist's office and have been given an injection in preparation for having my teeth drilled. :wacko:

No kidding! I was going to say you shouldn't go to Grand Sichuan, in that case. Maybe you shouldn't, at that, but you do like the food there, don't you?

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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Just to clear up any possible misunderstanding...I don't mean to knock a great place like Grand Sicuan International. I do like the food there (although sometimes it doesn't like me). I have eaten there nearly a half dozen times. After traveling to Chengdu (the capital of Sicuan Province), I can revisit many of the dishes I sampled during my Mainland sojourn. My only misgiving is that on one occassion I requested a recommendation of a mild dish - not spicy - and had to ask the waiter to return the dish becuase of a preponderance of the peppercorns that I mentioned previoulsy.

Regardless of this experience I find both the 23rd street and the 51st Street retaurants to provide some of the best quality food for the price in the city. I have heard contrasting opinions on the East Side cousin of this group of restaurants. And I have not heard anything about the downtown sibling.

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JAMAICAN. Yipes and Holy Moly!!! :shock:

that's what i was thinking.

Hee hee..i remember this one time I had a suitor over to my house. I had a bottle of Jamaican hot sauce on a shelf and he said..wow, you like hot sauce, huh? I love all hot stuff! So he grabe the bottle, and actually swigs (like put his mouth an everything) a moutful of it. Man he turned all different shades of color, sweated, gasped and was actually tired once his ordeal was all over.

I never went out with him again.

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As far as hottest food, i would definitely have to go with Thai, in Thailand. That stuff is hot as hell, but it's so good you can't stop eating it. Also, there was a little burger joint in my hometown that was inexplicably owned by a Thai and a Korean, that had a decent Thai menu. If you asked them to make it the way they would for a Thai, it was really, really hot but tasty as hell.

"yes i'm all lit up again"

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*lol* it's the little things that tell you who people are really. (to be honest, it wasn't that he couldn't take the heat - it was that he put his saliva all over a communal item)

I've got a serious respect for the scotch bonnet now. I made some Indian chicken curry over the weekend, and the scotch bonnets wer elooking good at the store, so i decided to get one very tine one (it wound up beign free) and using it to spice my curry.

I didn't use gloves whilst chopping and my thumb was still tingling and tender after i had taken a shower AND washed the dishes.

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at that level of generality there's only one other region: the occident. and the "orient" would probably beat the "occident" on the spice/heat meter. but which part of the world are you specifically thinking of? to a large number of 18th/19th century orientalists the "orient" was what we now call the near and middle east.

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I think Thai food is the spiciest and consistently spicy across all their dishes too. The thing with Thais is that they use chilies in everything- soups, salads, noodles, curry and even in desserts. Often Thais eat ground red chilies and sugar with sour mangos. Also, something unique with Thai food is the way they pair the spicy, perfectly to my taste, with sweet and sour which I think makes Thai food amazing.

The hottest dish that I have eaten in my years Thailand would be a very fiery som tam (papaya salad) or a larb gai ( spicy northern chicken salad). I love chilies and those two particular dishes had me sweating.

By the way the best way to get rid of the heat is to drink dairy, milk or yogurt like the Indians do. The Thai serve lots of steamed rice or stick rice up north with their meals to help dissapate the heat.

-Jim

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