There are many spicy foods, but none seem to come even close to Thai foods. I’ve had Indian food in India and Mexican food in Mexico and neither one brought tears to my eyes the way Thai food, real Thai food, did the first time I had it.
It seems like Thai’s like to add chili’s to every dish and you’ll find a variety of chili condiments on the table at any Thai restaurant. The most common are simple dried chili powder and nam prik which literally means “chili water” and is a combination of fresh chili’s, vinegar, fish sauce and lime juice.
Thai’s use a wide variety of chili’s in their cooking, but the most common are the prik kee nu and the prik chee faa chili’s. Both will curl your hair, but the prik kee nu is definitely the hotter of the two. Tread carefully with these chili’s if you’re not used to spicy food and I mean REALLY spicy food, not what you typically find in America.
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Prik kee nu chilis are green or red and about one inch in length. You can find them in most major cities in the U.S. in Oriental grocery stores and they freeze well (up to one year) so if you’re just visiting the city for the weekend you can buy lots and freeze them. Simply wash the chili, dry thoroughly and put it in a Ziplock freezer bag to freeze.
When the prik kee nu is dried it is called prik hang and is even hotter if that’s possible. You can also find these in Oriental groceries and the smaller the chili the hotter it will be. My wife Golf and I get these shipped to us by her dad from Thailand by the kilo, we typically use about ½ pound a month. You will very likely get better mileage 
When I started eating with Golf she would always tell the waitress to make our order paed mak mak. I had no idea what that meant for weeks until finally she told me, paed means “spicy”. So my introduction to spicy Thai food was extra spicy from a Thai perspective. In years before that I know that any Thai food I got was served for Western tastes and even now if I am by myself and order food paed mak mak they won’t make it nearly as spicy as they do when I am with Golf.
Don’t think though that Thai food is just about the spicy chili’s. The spicy dishes usually combine other elements such as sweet, sour and salty together in intriguing ways. If you haven’t tried real Thai food yet then I suggest you subscribe to my feed and keep coming back. I will be sure to post many great authentic spicy Thai recipes during our time in Bangkok, so don’t miss out.
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My passable Thai recipes are Pad Thai and Tom Yum Goong, but I would still tone down the spicyness for my son. I hope you could add this Thai Chili widget at the end of this post so we could add you in our list of food bloggers who blogged about Thai Chili, thanks!
Ohh this talk of spicy food. It makes me truly wish I had more chances to cook with the hottest of the hot. With my family, food that is too hot can cause problems. My son finds that even too much ginger makes the food ‘too spicy.’ Luckily my partner is a bit more adventurous, but it isn’t only until I see family from Ecuador that I actually get to let go.
I know hispanic food doesn’t share the same kind of spicyness as Thai food (obviously…different peppers), but this talk of chili still makes me homesick. There’s an Oriental grocer nearby with mostly Thai and Korean foods (I typically only go there for sweet rice for onigiri and noodles) and I’ve always longed to just take a sample of some chili home with me. They look and smell sooo good.
My kids won’t eat even the slightest spicy food, so we often have to cook something different for them if we are having a spicy dish. I’m not too familiar with Ecuadorean food, but I know when we were in Mexico last year we had some pretty spicy dishes, albeit nothing close tot he heat levels of really spicy Thai food. Maybe you can get some of those chili’s next time you’re at the market and do a sample dish just for yourself…and you can always decrease the amount of chili in the recipes to make it more palatable for your partner.
I do plan on trying some… some day.
I can relate to making something new for the child. I keep a bag of frozen chicken nuggets or taco stuff on hand for such occasions. You’d think with him being my son he’d be more open to the heat.
I’m actually not really a huge fan of traditional Ecuadorian food, but being amongst family that appreciates a good habanero makes it a bit more worth-while to make a nice spicy dish. I know the habanero doesn’t hold a candle to the naga jolokia, but I know what I like and I like my tongue to be not blackened and shriveled