Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Japanese Curry with Ghost Chiles

Have you heard of ghost chiles? I've also seen them called bhut jolokia and naga jolokia. They're hot. Really hot. Hottest pepper in the world. They come in at about 1,000,000 on the Scoville scale, or 3-10 times hotter than a habaƱero.

I was lucky enough to get a sample package of fresh ones (only dried have been available until now) from Marx Foods*. I opened the package, and was immediately assaulted by their fragrance - they even smelled hot. I was a little apprehensive - what could I possibly do with a chile that's so strong? Well, first off, I gave a few away to coworkers. (None of the Americans wanted any, so they went to Mexicans, a Laotian, and a Korean.)

I realized I hadn't made Japanese curry in a while, and that sounded like a good (and easy) place to start. Armed with my package of S&B Golden Curry (mild), I chose the smallest pepper in the package.

Aw, how cute. What wasn't so cute was that I could find only one glove. So my knife hand went gloveless. While mincing, a piece of chile touched a cut on my hand. Ow. Burn. Ow. Yikes! Experiencing firsthand what this little monster chile could do, I decided to only use half of it in the curry. I used about 1.3 pounds of pork, and an equal amount of veggies (carrot, celery, green pepper, onion). So 2.5 pounds of stuff, with a piece of chile the size of my fingernail.

And you know what? It was good. Really good. Ghost chiles have an awesome flavor. I could've even added the other half of the chile, and it wouldn't have been too hot. (Husband called this a "3" on the hotness scale.) Maybe it's because it was simmered for a while, maybe because it sat overnight, but the heat definitely mellowed out.

So, experiment #1 with ghost chiles complete and successful. I wonder what's next...

*The chiles were provided free of charge from Marx Foods. I didn't promise to blog about them, and they didn't ask me to.

8 comments:

caninecologne said...

hi vicki - wow! ghost chilis!!! you are one brave lady!

Vicki said...

Hi CC - Not brave. I was scared to death! But, try everything once is my motto :)

Chilli Fan said...

This looks awesome - I love Japanese food - how hot was it?

Vicki said...

Hey Chilli Fan - Not nearly hot enough :)

kirbie said...

I've never heard of ghost chiles! Interesting. I wonder where the name comes from?

Vicki said...

Hey kirbie - The name comes from a translation error, from what Google tells me :)

KirkK said...

Hey Vicki - I've had ghost chilies a couple of times...... on a couple of occasions it wasn't very hot.

Vicki said...

Hey Kirk! The one in the curry must've been a dud, because I made some hot sauce with others, and it was MOST definitely hothothot!