Piri Piri

Piri piri is a cultivar of the Capsicum frutescens pepper descended from the malagueta pepper, and the name also refers to the spicy sauce made from it, defined by the Oxford Dictionary as a very hot sauce made with red chili peppers. Portuguese explorers developed the pepper in Portugal's former southern African territories and carried it to other Portuguese-controlled regions; the word comes from the Ronga language of southern Mozambique, where pilipili means pepper, with regional variants including pili pili in the Democratic Republic of Congo and peri peri in Malawi and South Africa. The peppers are extremely hot, registering 50,000 to 175,000 Scoville heat units, and the sauce combines chili and garlic with an oily or acidic base, commonly adding salt, lemon, whisky, citrus peel, onion, pepper, bay leaves, paprika, pimiento, basil, oregano or tarragon depending on the recipe. Beyond its long popularity in Portugal and southern Africa, the sauce became internationally known through the South African restaurant chain Nando's, especially in the United Kingdom.