Thai cuisine is notorious for being spicy, more often than not...and of those times, extremely spicy! Granted you can handle it, all thai dishes are among the most delicious in the world so you should try even the spiciest of the lot...if you’re brave enough.
When you’re up for the challenge of tasting the spiciest dishes Thailand has to offer, here’s a list (in order of least to most spicy) for you to order and set your taste buds on fire, literally!
11. Pad Prik
This dish is so spicy you’ll surely be sweating and reaching for extra rice in an attempt to extinguish the fire! It's made with cuts of beef, pork, chicken or fish are cooked alongside peppers, onions, garlic and basil and last but not least, bird’s eye chillies - the killer ingredient.
10. Khao Pad Nam Prik Narok
The name of this dish is literally “fried rice with chilli paste from hell”. You may think this is a joke, but translate it and you’ll see it’s not! To make this, sun dried chillies are pounded in a pestle and mortar with garlic, palm sugar, shrimp paste and fish pieces, before being fried with rice and served. Meaning, the rice is coated in this devil of a paste and there’s no escaping or diluting the fires from hell.
9. Pad Ka Prao
A quite popular dish, you’ll find it served everywhere. It is made with either fish, chicken, or pork and the star ingredients, basil and chili.
8. Tom Yum Kung
Another very popular dish, this soup is full of fried chilli and chilli paste which makes for the base of the soup. Galangal and lemongrass are added making it a hot but aromatic dish that will heat up your entire body.
7. Laab
This salad is one of the two most popular in Thailand, with the other also making it on this spicy dish countdown. It is originally from Isaan and involves rice being toasted and pounded before being added to a mix of pork or chicken, mashed chillies and onions. For some reason with this one, it doesn’t seem so spicy at first but the more bites you take, the spicier it gets!
6. Tom Klong Pla Grab
Don’t be fooled by this soup practically transparent brown color, it is incredibly spicy! It’s a sour and spicy soup that uses dried fish and dried chillies as its two main ingredients, along with galangal, kaffir leaves and lemongrass. The funny thing is, most Thai’s find this a refreshing dish but most westerners can’t handle it.
5. Tom Laeng
This is a lesser known dish made of pork bones that are boiled until the meat is soft and coming away from the bone, along with spring onions and copious amounts of green chillies. Another deceiving dish, its clearish broth with floating green vegetables looks like your nan’s homemade chicken soup, but don’t be mistaken!
The dish that your nose will feel before you even eat it - no joke, just the smell of this notorious orange curry from the south will singe the hairs up your nostrils! This thin, soup-like curry made with either fish or shrimp gets its kick from the shrimp paste and bird’s eye chillies that are used and its sourness from the presence of tamarind.
3. Som Tam
Another Isaan dish is the other salad to make the list - the fiery papaya salad, which depending on who makes it, could easily have been number 1 on this list. Unripened papaya is used providing the salad with a tangy taste, served with a pounded mixture of salt, lime juice, fish sauce, coconut sugar and a generous handful of fiery hot chillies.
2. Gaeng Kua Kling
This southern dry curry (not soup like) dish is made of a curry paste consisting of chilli, pepper, lemongrass, garlic, turmeric, galangal, salt, and shrimp paste that is added to meat (pork, chicken, beef, or seafood) while it’s roasting in a pan.
1. Gaeng Tai Pla
Another southern specialty takes the gold! This ridiculous curry dish is made with dried chillies, galangal, turmeric and kaffir leaves, as well as fermented fish innards, fish, pumpkin, eggplant, yardlong beans and bamboo shoots. If you can manage to eat this, you are one hell of a trooper!
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