Hottest Meals Out of Mexico

Six Highly Picante Mexican Foods

6. Chocolate Picante

Chili of choice: Ancho chilies
Scoville Rating: 1,000–1,500 units

The traditional Aztec recipe for Mexican hot chocolate is made by grinding cocoa beans with cinnamon, anise, chilies and vanilla pods. The combination of fiery chilies and bitter chocolate create a fiesta of flavours in your mouth. This perfect pairing also appears in pollo mole, a chicken dish with a spicy chocolate-chili sauce, and many other types of Mexican dishes.

Image Source: Lu_Lu’s photostream via Flickr

5. Salsa Verde

Chili of choice: Serrano or jalapeño
Scoville Rating: 8,000–22,000 units (serrano),2,500–9,000 units (jalapeño)

How do Mexicans spice up their tacos, quesadillas, gorditas, tostadas, molotes, chalupas and empanadas? With salsa verde—and a whole lot of it. The bright green sauce is made with tomato, white onion, cilantro, garlic, coriander and 2 to 3 serrano or jalapeño peppers, stemmed and chopped with or without seeds. If you’re already wary, definitely skip the seeds.

Image source:  sartenazo.com

4. Pico de gallo 

Chili of choice: chili powder (can vary but cayenne is a popular type)
Scoville Rating: 30,000–50,000 units

Pico de gallo can be prepared in a variety of ways, but one of the popular methods in certain regions of Mexico is as a fruit salad. Some of the ingredients you’ll find include watermelon, orange, jicama (Mexican turnip) and cucumber and papaya tossed in lime juice, as well as chamoy (a savory sauce that is salty, sweet, sour and spiced with powdered chilies) and, of course, more chili powder sprinkled on top.

Image source: Chune Town

3. Pozole

Chili of choice: Piquin
Scoville Rating: 40,000–58,000 units

Pozole is a traditional Mexican dish of spicy pork and hominy stew—and a national hangover cure. It’s made with roast pork, fresh hominy, garlic and cumin and topped with signature Mexican flavors: lime, cilantro, avocado and fiery-hot grounded chile piquin.

Image Source: Guadalajara

2. Chicharrón en Salsa Roja

Chili of choice: Chilies de árbol
Scoville scale: 50,000–65,000 units

Chicharrónes are pork rinds slow-cooked in salsa roja (red sauce) for red-hot flavor. Salsa roja is made of fresh tomatoes, garlic and loads of dried chilies de árbol. This small but potent Mexican pepper has a heat index between 50,000 and 65,000 Scoville units!

Image source:  MexKitchen

1. Chilaquiles

Chili of choice: habanero
Scoville Rating: 100,000–350,000 units

Chilaquiles are a traditional Mexican dish typically made of corn tortillas, cut into quarters, lightly fried and drenched in tomato sauce seasoned with habanero chilies, cheese onion and—you guessed it—more chilies.

Chilaquiles are another claimed hangover remedy in Mexico because spicy food is said to help the recovery process—and chilaquiles have a reputation for causing fire, sweat and tears.

Los Chilaquiles, a restaurant in the city of Guadalajara that is named in homage to the dish, claims to have the spiciest chilaquiles in the world. Like a spicy-wings challenge at an American pub, Los Chilaquiles offers its own spicy challenge: to eat a full portion of chilaquiles made with triple the heat of dried green, piquin and habanero chilies in less than 30 minutes.

According to the owner, out of the 30 people who have ever attempted the feat, only 3 have succeeded.

Image Source: Gilman