If you were blindfolded and asked to choose between spicy food and un-spiced food based only on their aroma, you would probably choose the spicy food because of its aroma.
Spices also add a certain zing to the food making it more pleasing to your palate.
Now, if you are the kind who loves spicy food and a dare to taste the world’s spiciest chilies and foods, we are going to introduce you ten of the most renowned ones globally that are sure to set your mouth afire and your taste buds craving for more.
Before we start, let us warn you that the versions of spicy food that you taste may not just be spicy, they may be fiery hot too!
Before you take up a dare, make sure you are acclimatized to eating spicy food and the world’s hottest chilies like the Carolina Reaper, Naga Viper, and such. Or else you can end up with a bad case of teary eyes, dysentery, diarrhea or gastroenteritis.
Beware! But overall spicy food has great curative properties, and its effects are only temporary and till your body crosses the threshold levels of spice tolerance.
Let’s start!
If you love chicken wings spicy, then this spicy food dish is just right for you. It is not called suicide- chicken-wings for nothing, though! This American appetizer dish is made from a marinade of chopped chilies, hot red-chili sauce, pepper, and more of the red chili flakes. Need any more explanations about the suicide mission? The mix of Korean, Mexican, and Chinese peppers is what the dish contains, and it is no small wonder that it is rightly called a suicide if you are not used to spices at this high level.
This dish from Peru uses the local yellow chili peppers of the local area. It is a tripe stew with loads of the yellow peppers thrown in when stewing. The traditional Cau Cau of Creole is generally served with rice. Fine strips of tripe are pre-cooked and then cooked together with potatoes, the aji Amarillo Peruvian yellow chilies, lots of ginger, and garlic with a sprinkling of chopped Herba Buena or simple mint. It can be too spicy hot for most people to handle. Be prepared for some super spicy hot stew served piping hot to add some heat to your spicy food!
This spicy food dish is meant to be eaten in the winter months. The Sichuan hot-pot is regularly consumed in winter to improve circulation and can be a soup that is mouth-numbingly fiery on the taste buds. Your craving for hot spicy food ends in the hotpot, which is a melting pot of literally anything available to include in the stew. The main ingredients of this stew are loads of onions, garlic, ginger, Sichuan peppers a variety of pork, beef and other meats, mushrooms, vegetables, duck blood, a pig’s brain, chicken feet, soy sauce, fish sauce and anything else cooked or should we say stewed in a broth filled with peppers and pepper oil. Watch your mouth! Many foreigners have commented they could taste nothing because of the numb mouth for months!
Don’t tell us you have not tried the spicy food of Korean Kimchi pickles before? Ah, the versions in America, Europe that you tasted are very bland compared to the spicy Kimchi Jjigae well known and consumed in Korea as a stew. While cooking, the ingredients are local and look simple enough. The recipe uses lots of scallions, garlic, mushrooms, tofu, red chilies, and vinegar simmered till the stew tastes perfectly infused with all the spiciness. The stew is boiled in chilies, and the technique of slow cooking makes the fiery hot broth a combination of pure spice in every spoon and on your tongue. The dish is served piping hot and is as spicy as hell! People joke that the east uses water toilets and not tissues since the food probably needs both water and a fire extinguisher too.
Goa spent a long time under the Portuguese and adapted their foods and tastes too. The Pork based original version was preserved in red wine, with garlic pods and green peppers. The Goans made it slightly-spicier with palm vinegar, Indian green, and Kashmiri red chilies, a whole host of spices like cinnamon, cumin, coriander, turmeric, vinegar and more. Present-day versions use the hottest chili in the world called ‘bhoot jolokia” or the dreaded ghost chilly! Be prepared to be haunted by this spicy gravy or curry from India that can shock the daylights out of you and is eaten with fermented rice idlis called sannas.
The Jamaicans love the scotch bonnet chilies. And the Jerk Chicken, aka the dish with ‘six side spicy food bombs’ is chicken wings that are Hell-brined, then smoked and finally grilled to perfection in a mix of hot scotch bonnet chili sauce, tons of yellow mustard, and many other fiery spices. The Jamaican meal is incomplete without this iconic meal made of chicken wings marinated in a marinade of habanero peppers as they are called locally, cinnamon, cloves, thyme, nutmeg, garlic, ginger, and green onion stems. It is served with more scotch bonnet chilies sauce, banana and guava ketchup, mustard sauce, and more. Test your tolerance to spice with this freakishly spicy fiery hot dish.
The Neua Pad Prik from Thailand is a spicy food from Thai cuisine stable, also called the Thai pepper steak. The differentiating factor is that the ginger and chilies in Korea are fiery hot and regularly consumed by the Thai people. What is fiery for you could be just another flavor for the Thai people. The beef dish is cooked with basil, shallots or small onions, ginger, garlic, and loads of green-eye chilies. Have you heard of the Scoville scale? The scale is used to measure the heat units, and this dish has a rating of 100,000 to 250,000 Scoville units. How on earth do the Thai people eat such simple but hot food?
Otak in Malay or Indonesian spoken widely in Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia mean the “brain.” No, the spicy food won’t hit your brain directly but looks like the brain instead. Made from sea fare, the grilled cake contains galangal that tastes like green chili but looks like ginger, belacan, curry powders made from coriander, chilies powder, cumin, and turmeric, tapioca starch, garlic, and other spices all wrapped up and steamed or grilled in a banana leaf. The Indonesian version is white and may not contain curry paste and looks like a floating brain. The Malaysian and Singapore curry could be reddish, orange, or brown. The ginger and chili paste used is what makes this dish so spicy, and the local galangal ginger and belacan chilies are super-hot!
The Wat is a spicy stew from Ethiopia. The Sik Sik Wat is the stew Wat made using paprika and the local chilies. The Wat is made from broth containing beef, chicken, lamb, spices, vegetables, and clarified butter added in finally. It starts without any oils and with just the onions being slow-cooked in a pot and then sautéed in fat with the addition of spices like ginger, garlic, fenugreek, rue, basil and more spices to cook on a slow flame with loads of fat being periodically added to the stew. Another spicy dish is the ‘afagn’ which is also made in an earthen pot with lots of spices.
The spicy tuna rolls of Bushido have a challenge attached to the spicy food dish. They are so popular in a restaurant in Charleston, S.C. that the dare is to eat ten of these, and perhaps many have tried, and very few have succeeded so far! The Spicy Tuna Roll Challenge will see your mouth water, and eyes fill with tears and ears pound as sweat drips off every pore, and masses watch you undertake the once-in-a-lifetime challenge that lasts just ten rounds!
