Thaindian News

London, Sep 30 (IANS) An aspiring British chef has died after eating a bowl of super hot chilli sauce on its own in a challenge with a friend. Andrew Lee, 33, was found dead the morning after betting his girlfriend’s brother he could eat the hottest dish.

Lee, a fork-lift truck driver from the town of Doncaster who wanted to cook for a living, prepared a tomato sauce made with red chillies grown on his father’s allotment.

After eating it, he complained of itching all over his body and girlfriend Samantha Bailey discovered him dead in bed beside her the next morning, an inquest heard in Doncaster.

The mother of four called paramedics but they could not revive him.

Toxicology tests are now being carried out to determine if Lee suffered a fatal reaction to the dish or whether anything else contributed to his death.

“Andrew just ate the chillies with a plate of Dolmio (pasta) sauce,” said sister Claire Chadbourne. “It was not a proper meal because he had already eaten lamb chops and potato mash after work.

“He apparently got into bed at 2.30 a.m. and started scratching all over. His girlfriend scratched his back until he fell asleep. She woke up and he had gone. It is incredible. Who would have thought he could have died from eating chilli sauce?

“We don’t know of anything else that could have caused his death. The post mortem showed no heart problems. He loved cooking for his friends. He always said he wanted to be a chef but didn’t want to start at the bottom,” she said.

Andrew’s mother Pamela said: “He was a strapping lad. We can only put it down to the sauce.”

British dieticians advise against eating chillies on their own.

In July an Indian chef in London claimed his curry creation, titled the Bollywood Burner, to be the hottest in the world.

The lamb dish, inspired by Andhra cuisine, was made with two of the world’s hottest chillies, the Dorset Naga and the Scotch Bonnet. The Dorset Naga is over 100 times hotter than the Jalapeno pepper.