Jump to content
  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

which cuisine has the spiciest food?


Recommended Posts

The answer to the first question necessarily involves per capita comparison. Korean dishes, taken by themselves, may not be extremely spicy. When such dishes are eaten in complementary combination morning, noon, and night, however, they are exceeded only by the Thais and Indians, and followed by the Mexicans.

On the whole, I suppose Korean is up there, compared to say, French, or Japanese. However, I eat Korean food morning, noon, and night, and I have to say, I still don't think it's spicy compared to say, Thai. Just my opinion.

Mexican? Hmm, I guess it depends where you're talking about.

My answers:

1. Personally, I would guess Thai, in general has the spiciest food, esp if you eat the peppers by accident.

2. The spiciest dish for me would have been this one Chinese hot pot sort of thing I had, somewhere in L.A. area. I forget where it was, maybe the heat addled my brain, but damn it was hot.

I love cold Dinty Moore beef stew. It is like dog food! And I am like a dog.

--NeroW

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had exactly the same experience in Central Africa, as a Peace Corps volunteer. I was eating at a "host family" house. They had a fish stew. I accidently ate the chile pepper. As I gulped down water and gasped for breath they said, "You shoudn't eat that; that's for flavor". .....

You my friend are truely a world traveller.

As I was scrolling down this thread, I was hoping someone would mention the colonial Africa - alas, It was not so - Some of the stews in Ghana, Senegal are fiery hot. The heat in some of the dishes in South Africa are unbelievable.

anil

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As with the other Malay cuisines of Indonesia and the Philippines, Malaysia can produce some spicy cuisine, but the really hot stuff is reserved for condiments, rather than added to the dish in large amounts while cooking.

I wouldn't agree with that. What you're saying is true of certain foods like ulam, which is a bunch of green vegetables eaten with sambal belacan (shrimp paste with hot pepper), budu (fish sauce), tempoyak (fermented durian) for those who want it, etc. But what about when things are cooked with belacan and hot pepper, for example? There are all sorts of Malaysian sauces that dishes are cooked with (some of the curries are quite hot and it's standard for hot peppers to be pounded into the curry paste), not to mention things fried with dried chili. And then there are the stuffed hot peppers...

As for the cuisine of Sabah and Sarawak, I'm frankly ignorant of it, never having set foot on Borneo.

On the Peninsula, perhaps East Coast food is hotter than West Coast food, but I kind of doubt there's a really pronounced difference. Just the same, try visiting Kota Bharu next time; it's worth visiting for a bunch of reasons.

Based on only two weeks in Java (Jakarta, Jogyakarta/Solo, Surabaya) in the 70s, I got the feeling the cuisine there was subtler (not counting that awful black Javanese tea :wacko:) and not as hot as Malaysian food.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Based on only two weeks in Java (Jakarta, Jogyakarta/Solo, Surabaya) in the 70s, I got the feeling the cuisine there was subtler (not counting that awful black Javanese tea :wacko:) and not as hot as Malaysian food.

Isn't sambal (and many varieties of it) popular in the Javanese style cooking ?

anil

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I am jealous of all of you more-experienced chile-eaters. I am still a novice, working on upping my tolerance. :smile:

The hottest thing I have ever eaten was a home-made gumbo that I helped cook with a friend. She pulled a good handful of fresh chiles (not sure of the type) out of her garden and added them to the pot before I could object. The gumbo turned out to be so hot and tongue-numbing, it had no flavor to me whatsoever. What a waste of perfectly good shrimp!

The second hottest was a Thai dish, a leftover brought home by my dad from a restaurant meal. He couldn't eat it because it was "too fishy." Well, it was indeed extremely fishy, in a way I have never encountered in Thai food since, so maybe it was bad? But it was also terrifyingly hot, but not so hot that I couldn't taste it (too bad).

My brother has an Indian friend (sorry, don't know what part of India his family hails from, all I know is that they lived in NY) who preferred his food to be so incendiary that he did some real damage to his stomach and was put on a permanent bland diet by his doctor. Poor guy.

Kathy

Minxeats
http://www.foodloversguidetobaltimore.com/'>Food Lovers' Guide to Baltimore

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Based on only two weeks in Java (Jakarta, Jogyakarta/Solo, Surabaya) in the 70s, I got the feeling the cuisine there was subtler (not counting that awful black Javanese tea :wacko:) and not as hot as Malaysian food.

Isn't sambal (and many varieties of it) popular in the Javanese style cooking ?

Yes, many varieties. To me, sambal is just a sauce that has a mixture of things in it, but not a curry or some other types of dishes. The online Malay-English dictionary I use defines "sambal" simply as:

spicy condiment

This "Interactive Dictionary: Indonesian-English" defines sambal as:

a spicy sauce made with chili peppers

And in Indonesian as

Makanan penyedap yang dibuat dari lombok/cabai.

That means "A condiment (`makanan penyedap' means a food that makes other things tasty) made with chili peppers (lombok and cabai both mean chili peppers - I recognize cabai from Malay, but the more common word there is lada; I wasn't aware that lombok means chili, and the word is not found in the Malay-English dictionary linked above)."

So I guess that establishes beyond doubt that sambal has chili in it, but still, the amount of bite does vary. And to be honest with you, it's almost a given that any Malay sauce for savory food will have some hot pepper in it. :biggrin: With Javanese food, some dishes may be liable to use black pepper and dispense with hot pepper. I can remember at least one Indonesian recipe like that - I'm pretty sure it was for beef (probably originally water buffalo) cubes in a delicious rempah (spice mixture) with coconut milk and plenty of black pepper but no hot pepper. It was still pretty robustly spiced, at that. :biggrin::laugh:

Michael aka "Pan"

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll never forget when I was in Edinburgh about seven years ago having dinner at an Indian restaurant. Having spent two years living in London and frequenting corner curry houses at least twice a week, I thought I had subjected my tongue to just about every level of heat possible -- and I'm a sucker for throat-defying, fire-flamed food. So, when I went to this Indian restaurant in Edinburgh, I had no qualms about ordering my dishes "hot." Our server set our plates down, smiled smugly, and three or four other servers walked over to join him. I took one bite of my vindaloo (which, by the way, I don't find hot in the slightest at Indian restaurants in America), and it was as close to death as I've ever felt. All of the servers began to laugh, while I suffered -- suffering that endured for at least 20 minutes. To this day, I have absolutely no idea what the hell they put in that vindaloo, but it was the single most horrifyingly hot dish I've ever eaten -- and the only one that I've not been able to eat. That said, I think by and large, Thai fare is the world's hottest cuisine, but since it plays off the sweet, sour and salty as well, it seems to always strike a balance. I love hot food, but only when I can still take in the flavors.

-Lori

-Midson-

A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart, who looks at her watch

-James Beard-

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...