Earthy and hot, chillies are integral to Indian cuisines. They add punch to our pickles and chutneys, and deepen the flavour profile of curries and stir-fries.
Indeed, most traditional Indian savoury dishes are incomplete without a little sprinkling of some kind of mirch.
This fiery ingredient brings alive a Kashmiri Rogan Josh, a Rajasthani Laal Maas, South India's much-loved rasam and Goa's famous vindaloo. Even a humble dal is elevated to gastronomic heaven with a simple tadka of dried red chillies in smoking hot ghee.
But how did the chilli reach India?
Indians discover heat
Contrary to popular belief, chillies came to India from outside: from Mexico. Christopher Columbus stumbled upon chillies there, and mistook them for a relative of the black pepper.
From Europe, Portuguese explorer Vasco Da Gama brought chillies to Goa. And from Goa, chillies made there way to South India.
Chillies then travelled with the army of the Maratha king Shivaji, who moved north to challenge the Mughal Empire during the 17th century.
Legend has it that the Marathas were victorious partly because eating chillies turned them into particularly fiery adversaries. While that may or may not be true, the fact remains that India is now the leading producer and exporter of chillies in the world, growing a wide variety of different types, particularly in the south.
Andhra Pradesh is the primary producer of chillies in the country followed by Karnataka, Rajasthan, Gujarat and others.
Hottest chilli in the world
Although chillies meet the culinary definition of a spice or vegetable, from a botanical point of view, they are fruits - berries, to be specific. But while other berries have thorns to protect against seed destroying predators, chillies have capsaicin, a chemical compound designed to cause pain in predators.
Heat seekers will know that the hotness of a chilli is measured in SHU (Scoville Heat Units). Carolina Reaper chilli is currently the hottest chilli in the world, at 2.2 million SHU. To put that in perspective, bell peppers have an SHU of 0, Tabasco sauce measures in at around 2,500 SHU and the Bhut Jolokia cultivated in the North-Eastern states of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh scores 855,000 on the scale.
Those who love chillies know that eating chillies isn't just about the heat, though. Different chillies offer different flavours - a red Thai bird's eye chilli (Kanthari Mulaku in Kerala) which you put in a raw papaya salad is sharper than the green chillies without which it is impossible to make the Bhutanese Ema Datshi.
Know your chillies
While fresh chillies are great for adding colour, crunch and heat to a dish, it’s the dried versions that offer the most surprising and complex flavours - from smoky to punishingly hot, to citrusy, earthy and mushroomy.
Mathania chillies from Rajasthan known for their bold red colour and spice level are mainly used in making lamb dishes like the laal maas.
Guntur chillies are used in making Hyderabadi and Lucknowi delicacies like the Rogan Josh and Dum ka Murgh.
The deep red and very flavourful Reshampatti chillies are mainly used in Maharashtrian and Gujarati cuisine to flavour pickles.
Kashmiri chillies are used as a generic chilli for colour and spiciness in most Goan dishes like the Vindaloo and Recheado.
“Goan cuisine uses a variety of chillies. The common ones used in the Goan catholic cuisine are the aldona chillies, peri peri (Portuguese chillies), bedgi/volanche chilli, Kashmiri chillies and the button chillies which are mainly used in dishes such as vindaloos, sorpotels, xacutis and recheados, etc. The Hindu Saraswat cuisine, which mainly consists of vegetarian dishes such as the caldeens, xacutis and fogats, uses canacona chillies, white and green gaunti (wild) chillies, hermal chillies and the Sankeshwari chillies,” explains Jerson Fernandes, Executive Chef, Novotel Hotels.
Chef Sandeep Sreedharan, founder of Mahe Goa, works with a variety of chillies but his absolute favourite are the guntur chillies also called Madras chillies in South India. “They are spicy and render a very peculiar flavour that is synonymous with South Indian cooking. In Kerala we use green chillies in curries and chutneys and spicy dried red chillies for tempering,” he adds.
A different level of hotness
Are Indians eating more chillies these days? Is our tolerance to chillies greater or lower than our parents' generation?
The answer is not a straightforward yes or no.
“The tolerance has definitely gone both ways. While one set of consumers now prefers their spiciness to be muted so as to enjoy the heat, another set loves a good mouth burn. The onslaught of different cuisines has also widened their palates and exposed them to more flavour nuances. Korean, Peruvian and regional cuisines are upping the chilli game with their pungency and spiciness while cuisines like Japanese, Spanish and Kashmiri are tuning people’s palate to the sweetness, heat and earthiness of the chilies,” explains Urvika Kanoi, Chef & Owner of Café Duco.
Research has shown that there is a genetic component to spice tolerance - identical twins are likely to love or hate spiciness equally. Having said that, our taste for different chillies can develop and evolve as we are exposed to more cuisines and ways to consume chilli. Trying a fermented savoury, sweet, spicy Gochujang paste is a whole new experience to eating mirch pakoras at the Triveni Terrace Cafe.
Decoding Indians’ love affair with chillies, Kamini Patel, Brand Director, Aramness, says, “The Indian palate is born to be excited. We need chillies to balance a meal. The tolerance level may have reduced mostly due to health issues and change in the way we are cooking at home. But the love for chillies has not gone down at all. If anything, it has evolved to accept different kinds of chillies from all regions of India and the world. The raw green chili on the dinner table now sits with the sriracha and Schezwan and the red chilli flake sachets for the pizza,” she says.
Take heart, chilli heads. The mirchi is still marching on.
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