Bài học lớp học · Chillies · 🇲🇽 Mexico

Chillies - over 60 kinds in Mexico

From mild and sweet to fiery hot - chillies started here

Yellow, red and green chillies arranged on a white surface

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

Đây là gì?

Mexico is the birthplace of the chilli. Over 60 different kinds grow in the country - some sweet enough to eat like a sweet pepper, others so hot they make you cough. Chillies have been part of Mexican food for around 6,000 years - longer than the wheel has been around in many places.

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Chillies come in every colour: green, yellow, red, orange, brown, even almost black. They also come in every shape and size. The poblano is big and gentle. The jalapeño is the famous green one. The chipotle is a jalapeño that's been dried and smoked. The habanero is small, orange and very, very hot.

The 'hot' feeling isn't actually heat - it is a chemical called capsaicin in the chilli that tricks your tongue into thinking it has touched something burning. Birds can't feel it at all. That is on purpose: chillies want birds to eat them and fly the seeds far away.

Each Mexican region has its favourite chillies. Mexican cooks use them to make moles (rich sauces made from many ingredients mixed together), salsas, soups and stuffed dishes. A famous dish called chiles en nogada is stuffed poblano peppers with a creamy white sauce and red pomegranate seeds - the three colours of the Mexican flag.

Chillies have travelled the world. They are now used in cooking in India, Thailand, China, Korea, Italy and beyond. But every single one of those dishes - curry, gochujang, paprika - traces its chilli back to a plant that grew first in Mexico.

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Gợi ý thảo luận

  1. 01Why might it help a chilli plant to be eaten by birds but not by mammals?
  2. 02Lots of countries have a 'spicy' food. Why do you think people enjoy a food that almost hurts a tiny bit?
  3. 03What foods that grew first in one country are now eaten everywhere?
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Hoạt động lớp học

Make a class 'spice map'. On a world map, draw an arrow from Mexico to every country you can think of where chillies are now part of the food (India, Thailand, China, Korea, Italy, Hungary). How far has the chilli travelled?

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