What makes thai food spicy

Thailand is hot and muggy, ideal conditions for growing bacteria, so Thai food is hot and spicy as a preventative. The spiciness of Thai food is an integral part of a delicious culinary tradition. If you are not familiar with spicy foods, ask restaurants to tone down the spices so that you can learn to appreciate the dishes, and gradually increase the amount of spices in your food so that you can grow to love mind-blowingly spicy foods.

In addition to being a new culinary experience, it will also allow you to win chili pepper eating contests, a valuable skill in some nations. Ever since she began contributing to the site several years ago, Mary has embraced the exciting challenge of being a DelightedCooking researcher and writer.

Mary has a liberal arts degree from Goddard College and spends her free time reading, cooking, and exploring the great outdoors. Mary McMahon. Please enter the following code:. Login: Forgot password? My mother and I were upstairs and my father was in the kitchen frying peppers in oil in a cast iron pan. All of a sudden we started coughing and gagging as the weaponized capsaicin fumes wafted throughout the house. That was the last time he tried to make chili oil. Every now and then we'd make a trip to Vincent's Clam Bar in Westbury where we'd order scungilli in medium red sauce, with a little gravy boat of the hot sauce on the side.

Chili head that he was, even my father was willing to admit that the highest level of the spicy marinara sauce was too much for him. I wonder what he would have made of the whole Thai spicy thing. It is also spicy as hell, and the burn doesn't let up until after the last bite of torta or taco. On more than one occasion I've I asked for a bit of quesillo cheese to tame the heat. Chewing on the cool, salty cheese takes care of the fire in minutes. My friend Anne Noyes Saini , whose husband is North Indian, says she often has problems getting waiters in ethnic restaurants to serve her food that's up to native spice levels.

So as a public service she's compiling a list of the appropriate phrases in several languages, including Thai, Indonesian, and Korean. You might want to keep a piece of cheese with you when you try the respective phrases out.

Don't say I didn't warn you. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors.

There is a health benefit in eating spicy Thai food. You must be wondering why spices are used in Thai food so freely. Spices in large quantities reduce intestinal bacteria and parasites, so in the tropics, people adopted spicy food and simply felt better.

Any cuisine originated near the equator is spicy, be it Thai, Mexican or Indian. People were probably experimenting when they discovered that chilies and peppers helped cool down the body and so they started using them in every recipe. Spices also help food to stay fresher for a longer time as in the tropics, food tends to go bad faster due to high heat and humidity.