can i use dorset naga chillis in any of the recepes in this site an how many shuld i use?
That is a HOT chilli. It is very difficult to quantify how much anyone can tolerate. You have to experiment. If cooking for 2 people, start by adding 1/4 and take it from there.
It is funny you should ask this today. I have just made a red pepper, habanero chilli and apple jelly for eating with toast. I used 2 large red peppers, 2 cooking apples, 200 ml. malt vinegar, 500 gm. sugar and one chilli. It is still pretty hot!
My brother likes a Naga something or other curry... its paint strippingly hot... but he has built up over the years to hotter and hotter curry...
Steve
If it was too hot it would be painful, make you cry, cause reddening of the skin its touching... (I was watching a programme called 'man vs food' and he was eating hot spicy chicken wings with loads and loads of chilli on... his skin where the sauce had been on was actually red !.. tears streaming.. and looking like he'd been in a fight ! lol)
Steve
What would be the point of eating so hot food Kev that it feels unconfortable, unless you go for masochism or get addicted to the endorphine release from eating it? Make it hot by all means, but no so much that it hurts.
I saw that episode of Man v food too! Isnt true that you can get actual skin burns off really hot chilli's?
By the way that show was great! Stupid but great!
Sorry Man vs food, it's set in America where a guy goes on tour and eats those gigantic food challenges where you can get you name on the wall and a certificate!.... it is silly viewing but quite entertaining! When he ate the 'suicide' chicken wings with 12 different chillies in the sauce, the management would not let him have a drink or wipe his mouth for 5 mins afterwards... yes a bit sadistic!
I think there has been 3 seasons now... he did go to a curry house and ate a fahl or faal? They did give him him some lassi to go with tho! and he managed the whole lot..you can watch short clips on you tube..Its daft entertainment but I like to through it vicariously!
Aren't chillies what pepper spray is made from ? The stuff that burns your skin, has your eyes stream and you gasping for breath ?
Steve
Yeah, I think a concentrated form of capsaicin is used in pepper spray. Ouch!!
chillies don't burn the skin, in fact they don't burn at all, they give the sensation of burning. This is because, like most drugs (prescribed or otherwise) they work on the receptor principle. A receptor includes a protein which has a special shape (they ALL have special shapes!). That shape can 'receive' a certain shaped molecule, like a drug. If it fits exactly, then something happens, as in the case of the chilli. Certain chemicals in the chilli, called capsaicins, have a shape similar to other molecules, like vanillin and the chemicals in hot ginger root. If capsaincins enter the recptor, it allows calcium ions to channel into the cell, where it sets off a chain of events, which is interpreted by the brain as being burnt. There is no actual burning, and nothing is harmed (except one's pride if its too much!) Because the receptor was first identified as the receptor for vanillin (one of the main flavour chemicals in vanilla,('spose you guessed that !) it was called the 'vanillin recptor 1, or just VR1. These receptors are found in the moist areas of the body, although finger tips seem to suffer as well!
HTH
If the body is being tricked into thinking its being burnt then won't it respond to it in the same way ? Swelling ? blood flow ? and worse case going into shock ?
Steve
Where were you Lapis, we missed your scientific explanations :-)!
Those Dorset naga chillies are extremely hot! I grow them and you really need to be careful about how much you use. They have a lovely flavour (nicer than the bhut jolokia in my opinion) but as Mamta said, start of with a 1/4 and work from there, too much will just make the dish too hot for most people.
Why is it called the Dorset Naga? I can't remember fields of chillies while holidaying in Dorset!
May be it has something to do with the fact that the word 'Naga, pronounced as Naag, means a snake or serpent and the chilli in question is hot to the point of being poisonous! LOL!
Thanks Andrew. You learn something new here every day!
Will have to go to West Bexington, home of the Dorset Naga when I'm in the area. See the farm has an open day on 22nd August.
Winton
I'm sure the 'Naga' refers to Nagaland, a state in the far NE of India, next to Assam, where I believe all this 'hottest chilli' nonsense started.
Some suggest the 'Naga' chilli was a result of a military project. That seems a bit odd, as the hot capsaicins occur in nearly all chilli varieties, only not to such a high level. I think the most plausible story as to how the 'Naga' came about is nothing more than someone in Assam planting some variety of Capsicum chinense from the Americas, because, of the 250-300 varieties of chillies grown in India, none are Cap. chinense, they are either Cap. annuum or Cap. frutescens, or a cross of both. Even the little round Indian mundu chilli, grown in Goa (where it is usually strawberry shaped) and TN, is derived from the cascabel chilli, it being Cap. annuum.