Which of the many spices in a curry makes the curry hot?

Answer 1

Chilli
Paprika
Pepper

are the main ones

Ginger
Onion

are the milder ones

curry powder is just a mixture of spices in a jar

Answer 2

I often cook Indian food but I never use curry or chili powder.
To make a hot dish you need fresh chili. If you leave the seeds in the chili it will be even hotter. Since I live alone, I confess that I sometimes use chili flakes.
To get the hot spicy flavour without it burning your mouth, make the dish the day before and re-heat. That way you get the spicy flavour without the burn.
Other spices to use are mustard, fennel, cummin or jeera, funugreek, coriander, all in seed form and whole pepper corns. Dry fry these until they start to pop in the pan. After gently frying onion, garlic and ginger, add the meat or veg and possibly kefir or karri leaves. Add salt last. About 10 minutes before serving, stir in some garam masala. Look at some recipes for variations, like adding coconut milk or tomatoes. It's really a question of taste, and you have to experiment to find out what suits you best.

Answer 3

Being a Pakistani I can say that its the curry power which makes the curry hot and gives it its unique taste The curry power as said before by some other people comprises of a whole host of different spices, this depends on where in the Indian sub continent your from, this can mean the number of spices added and ground into a power or the quantity of each spice added. Surprising to say that most Pakistani/Indian households make there own curry power by combining different spices in different quantities meaning that a chicken curry will have its own unique flavour and spicy/chillness depending on who’s house you go to. This also applies to eating at takeaways and so on. These days curry power is commercially available and can easy be brought from asda or tescos, and of course it would be silly not to comment on the fact that the number of chillies and type of chillies you added to the dish will also make a difference.

Answer 4

Curry powder is a blend of spices, some of which are hotter than others. Various 'strengths' of curry powder use these spices in different ratios.

Chilli is the obvious source of fiery heat, but other sources include onions, ginger (which can be surprisingly hot), mustard etc.

A curry which relies purely on chilli for it's heat would probably taste 'unbalanced' - an analogy I sometimes use when explaining spice combinations is to compare them to treble, mid-range, and bass notes. Ginger, mustard, onion provide the 'lower range' full warmth, chilli the immediate hit.

Answer 5

mostly chilli's but also ginger and peppercorns. there is another spice that I only know as chinese or mandarin pepper that is used but only rarely. An awful lot depends on what the curry is to go with and where it is being made. In some areas the oils used in cooking the curry mixture are themself spicy like sesame chilli oil.

Answer 6

Chilli's and pepper are the main ones others like cumin and ginger complement them.The word curry actually means mixture but was adopted by the Europeans to refer to any spicey or hot food from Asia,ask for a curry in India and they wouldn't know what you were talking about.

Answer 7

Several of the spices used in "curry powder" have varying degrees of heat. The more chili powder used in a given curry powder, the more heat, thus making the dish hotter. Other spices used also give different kinds of heat. Ginger, clove, mustard seed, black pepper, red pepper, and cinnamon also bring different types of heat to the dish. In terms of burning your mouth type of hot, it's mostly the chili powder working its influence.

Answer 8

It's definately the Curry spice itself.

Answer 9

Lots of chili powder definitely makes a curry hot and spicy.

Answer 10

Chilli powder
Cayenne Pepper