The Food of Hell, Sambal!

The Food Of Hell From Indonesia

Famous as one of the best tropical countries, Indonesia provides tons of uniqueness and excitement. Its nature, culture, and art always bring millions of tourist each year. However, this time we are going to talk about one thing, Indonesia’s cuisine, in particular Sambal.

Sambal or sambel is infamous among tourist as the food of hell for its undeniable ability to make the consumer produces tears and sweat when eating. Produced using chili as its main ingredient, sambal is indeed tasted extremely spicy. But for India and Thai people, they already eat spicy food every day and maybe they do not have a trouble with eating Sambal.

Sambal is made by grinding ‘cabai’ or chili, along with several complements such as onion, ginger,  tomato, ‘terasi’, sugar, and salt. The ingredients are grinded using traditional tool made usually from wood or smooth stone. The texture is smooth with a vibrant color of green and red, depending on which chili you use.

Infamous among tourists for its spiciness, many tourists avoid it. However, some of them are challenged and try to eat it. Those who dare to try usually will get stomach ache or turn very red and sweaty in the face. Though super spicy, locals eat it in almost daily basis as their main meal. There also an eating chili contest and anybody can participate (except Children, Babies because they're too young to taste the chili and suffer immediately ). The reward is big but you have to pass all the obstacle like eating sambal with only one tofu and then drink hot ginger and close your mouth for 3 minutes immediately. It really torturing and make anybody (even the expert ) can't handle it. It's a little bit dangerous for health, so don't try it at home without guidance.

Most spicy foods cannot be eaten by animals because their tongue not used to it to eating spicy foods. Let me explain it to you, have you ever see an animal eating chili? of course not. Even if its a herbivore animal, their tongue not used to eat something spicy and contain chili (vegetable). If you want to prove it, you can give wildcat some small spicy chicken ( cat loves chicken ). Even all type of cats loves meat/chicken, they will not eat it because of the spicy chicken's smell weird from the normal one and if the cat still eats it, they will be not begging you to give it some chicken again because your spicy chicken already burns their tongue.

You can eat sambal as a condiment with some chickens, vegetable (lalab) , a bowl of rice, grilled fish, and beef. Sambal can be found at warung, traditional restaurant and traditional market. Indonesia is not the only one country that using sambal as a condiment, a country in asia such as Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Japan, China and even from the Europe such as Netherland.

Sambal is not included in junk or unhealthy food. Sambal's main ingredient is chili so there must be benefits from it. Some of the benefits can make our body more healthy and it can be used for reducing the weight of our body. Chili also contain vitamin C, so it can make blood circulation fluently.
The most common kinds of peppers used in sambal are:

- Adyuma, also known as habanero: a very spicy, yellow, and block-shaped pepper.
- Cayenne pepper: a shiny, red, and elongated pepper.
- Madame Jeanette: a yellow–light green, elongated, irregularly-shaped pepper.
- Bird's eye chili, also known as cabe rawit in Javanese
- Chili peppers are known as lombok in Javanese
- Cabe taliwang: a pepper spicier than the Bird's eye chili

Varieties of chili source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambal