얼마나 메울까?

Many cultures including Korean have adopted hot & spicy foods. I like spice foods, too. Those foods were not popular in the US when I came here about 20+ years. Then, influences from Mexican, Thai, and Korean spicy foods have been making American people hooked with the spicy foods. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to see that even burger franchise stores advertise hot burgers containing jalapeno peppers.

Various types of peppers are the main ingredient of the spicy foods.
(Q1) Which pepper is the hottest on Earth?
The degree of hotness is determined by the content of a chemical called capsaicin in the pepper. A while ago, an American chemist Wilbur Scoville developed a way to test the strength of the hotness (source: Wikipedia). Since then, Scoville Heat Units (SHU) have been used to indicate the amount of capsaicin in a chili pepper. According to this rating, Bhut Jolokia chili is considered the hottest pepper followed by Habanero. It is so hot that Indian military announced to use it as a 최루탄.



(Q2) Then what is the mildest one?? Guess (answer shown in the end).

I was looking for a recipe for an Indian dish, called Korma. The one I found described Cayenne pepper as an ingredient. Since I have not heard of it before, I researched a little about it. SHU for this pepper is moderate between Serrano and Thai pepper. So it is fair to say that it is hot one (at least to me). Of surprise, Cayenne peppers seem to have a variety of medicinal power (www.cayennepepper.info/)(www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/cayenne.htm).

(Q3) Well, my last question (to myself) is: How is my food?? Can't answer it yet, as I have not made it. Perhaps someday next week... ~*|*~

Q2-Answer: Bell pepper (피망)