Spiciest dishes in India?

I travel to eat, and I love spicy food. Whenever at home I get a curry I ask for it to be 'extra spicy' but it's never hot enough. One of my objectives travelling to India is to eat some of the spiciest food that I can. I understand that Telugu cuisine is some of the spiciest, so I'm planning a special trip to Hyderabad, but does anyone have any idea what the spiciest dishes in India are?

Spicy is different from just plain liberal use of chillies which is fiery, right? If usage of chillies is a barometer then the following spring to mind - King Chili / Bhut Jolokia from Nagaland (supposedly the strongest chilli in the world). Amongst cuisines - Chettinadu in Tamil Nadu is fiery. Near kota railway station in Rajasthan, one can purchase fried snacks (sev - made of moth / gram flour) where the shopkeepers specify how many grams of chili have been added per kg of flour. I believe it tops out at about half a kilo of red chili per kg of flour.

If variety of spices used is the parameter - many others would qualify and it's hard to comment. Kerala has some of the freshest spices used (well they grow them), Kashmir some of the most subtle (saffron and nutmeg).

The bhut jolokia (Assamese: ভূত-জলকীয়া),[1][2] also known as naga jolokia, naga morich, bih jolokia, u-morok, ghost pepper, ghost chili pepper, red naga chilli, and ghost chilli is an interspecific hybrid chili pepper cultivated in the Indian states of Assam, Nagaland and Manipur.[3][4] It is an interspecies hybrid of C. chinense and C. frutescens genes.[5]×Ads by SmartSaver+ 8

In 2007, Guinness World Records certified that the ghost pepper was the world's hottest chili pepper, 401.5 times hotter than Tabasco sauce; the ghost chilli is rated at more than 1 million Scoville heat units (SHUs). Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 SHUs. However, as of 2012, it was superseded by the Trinidad moruga scorpion.[6]

On December 26, 2013, the Guinness World Records rated the "Carolina Reaper" the world's hottest pepper, moving the ghost chili to third place.[7]

----cross posted with Vaibhav-----

PS- Other than Andhra cuisines, Laal Maans from Rajasthan is a delicious and hot meat (mutton) curry.

Apologies, what I did mean is fiery. Fiery and spicy are synonymous where I am from (New Zealand).

Thanks VA and BB for the very informative as well as mouth watering posts.
By the way it would be great to know where in Delhi some fiery and spicy items could be found.

Thanks for both your posts. Looks like I'm going to be making a special trip to Nagaland, for some bhut jolokia influenced cuisine. I've been wanting to visit Manipur, so Nagaland is close. Let's just hope I can get the restricted area permit!

Hello Josh,
You no longer need any special permit to visit either Nagaland or Manipur.

The Ghost Chili (bhut jolokia) is orignally from Assam ! For fun, check out this link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_5485277.html

If the sole purpose of a long and complicated trip to the NE is to try the Bhut Jolokia - You could try the Naga state canteen in Delhi or the Nagaland's kitchen. See this article - http://mumbaiboss.com/2013/01/04/on-...canteen-trail/.

I have procured Bhut Jolokia pickles at the India International Trade Fair. It should start in a few days at Pragati Maidan (Nov 14-27) - http://www.iitf.in/.

Wow! Thanks for the information Vaibhav.

TD- thanks for the correction about the state of origin. I was thinking that the last fair, I saw the pickle along with others such as bamboo shoot pickle and olive pickle (both assamese specialities).

Now I miss IITF and my favourite sellers of spices, madhubani paintings, carpets and weavings and dhokra art and whatnot ....

It seems to be synonymous in India, too. Everywhere I asked about the burning quality of the dishes, as I'm unable to tolerate the burn, I had to ask in multiple ways and even then couldn't always trust the answer. Not all spices burn, so in my head the two are not synonymous.

At any rate, any dish described as vindaloo (lamb vindaloo, chicken vindaloo) will be fiery. A friend of mine ordered chicken vindaloo. He was born in West Africa, where they put loads of cayenne on everything, and the chicken vindaloo was almost too much, even for him.

I should speak of the pride of Maharashtra, Kolhapuri Chicken. This is a special delight and sometimes requires special persuasion to the restaurant owner to serve it to forens. I might not be able to handle it anymore after I barely managed a black eyed pea dish with a single ghost chili for flavor. Maharashtrian Srikandh would be a great complement to either experience not to mention several bottles of Mexicola (Coca Cola with sucrose, bottled)..

If it is 'fiery' that the OP is looking for (as opposed to spicy), then he can try the famous Saojee cuisine in Nagpur.

It is an observation that many have made that fieriness of the cuisine is always in direct proportion to the general 'hotness' of climate it originates in. Case in point is the regional cuisine from North Maharashtra and Vidarbha, both of which are known for serving food that is fiery for the sake of being fiery.

Sorry, edwardseco, your Kolhapuri Chicken does not begin to compete with food from Jalgaon/Bhusawal and Vidarbha.

For one, the Kolhapuri Chicken will probably be tasty with the fieriness quotient adding to the taste.

The food that you may find in Jalgaon or Akola will be fiery for fieriness’s sake with a single point agenda of loading pain and humiliation on both ends of the alimentary canal!

I remember going to Ramtek, near Nagpur, on a class picnic with college mates, about 20 years ago. For lunch, we arranged to eat at one of the many messes in town that cater to the private engineering college student population staying in the town. We innocently dipped our roti bits into the watery looking yellow dal and tasted hell! Under howls of pain and abuse, we managed to finish the meal with cup loads of sugar (the caterer had run out of yoghurt – an effective antidote).

Memorable meal!

NORTH EAST FESTIVAL will be organized on 7th to 10th November, 2014 at IGNCA Ground, Janpath, New Delhi.

http://www.northeastfestival.com/nor...-festival-2014

Hey JoshG, you could also find out about this chilli-eating and rubbing-in-eyes competition. It's held in Assam.

Check this video out:



..."She's off her trolley. A confirmed nut."