An aspiring cook who challenged his friend to a chilli-eating contest died just hours later.

Andrew Lee, 33, had used a bag of home-grown red chillies to make a super-hot sauce.

The forklift truck driver, who had recently passed a medical at work, dared his girlfriend's brother to eat a spoonful - then ate a plateful himself. Shortly after he had a heart attack and died.

Mr Lee took a jar of the sauce to his girlfriend's house last weekend, where he challenged her brother Michael, his family said.

His sister, Claire Chadbourne, 29, explained: 'They had a contest over who could make the hottest chilli sauce.

'Andrew had used chillies to make Thai dishes before but had never made anything this hot.

'My dad grew the chillies especially for Andrew. The contest was planned and he gave them to him.

'Andrew just ate it with a plate of Dolmio. It was not a proper meal because he had already eaten lamb chops and mash after coming home from work. I don't know if Michael ate the chilli sauce as well.'

But as he went to bed after the contest, Mr Lee, of Edlington, Doncaster, had complained of itching, she added.

The next morning, his girlfriend Samantha Bailey, a mother of four, found him unconscious.

She called an ambulance, but paramedics were unable to revive him. Mr Lee was pronounced dead at the scene.

Mrs Chadbourne added: 'He apparently got into bed at 2.30am and started scratching all over.

'His girlfriend scratched his back until he fell asleep. She woke up and he was dead.

'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.

'He was perfectly healthy and the post-mortem showed no heart problems.'

She added: 'He loved cooking for his friends and was a good cook. He always said he wanted to be a chef but didn't want to start at the bottom.

'He would do anything for anybody. He never held a grudge and loved fishing and computers.'

Mr Lee's mother, Pamela, 61, said: 'He had used chillies in cooking but never made a sauce like this before.

1'He tested the sauce after making it, stuck his finger in and went to wash it, saying, "Wow, that's hot."

'We don't know what happened to him. Something has given him a cardiac arrest and we can only put it down to the chilli sauce.'

Toxicology tests are under way to see whether Mr Lee had a fatal reaction to the sauce.

Attempts to develop ever hotter varieties of chilli pepper have been condemned by health experts, who warn of potentially lethal effects.

Mild adverse reactions can include burning eyes, a streaming nose and uncontrollable hiccups.

darwiin wins!

Fuck that. I want to get some of this sauce he made...!!!

Best death ever or best death ever?

Best dump ever, shortly after best death ever.

wow. The itching thing is usaully an allergic reaction. I would assume the heart attack had something to do with that.

Martyr.

This pleases me because I can guarantee there will be many more deaths when peoples' curiosities MUST be satisfied.

haha I was waiting for somebody to post that shit.

oleoresin of capiscum

I poked around on IRC, and here's the recipe he used:

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This is from memory so don't harsh on me if i got something wrong. I was not in the kitchen the entire time.

First he put the peppers really quickly into some hot nearly boiling water, then yanked them out, and ran them through a food processor. He then put all of that stuff in a big pan, covered it in oil and vinegar, and set it cooking at about half heat.

He cut up an onion and some garlic and put them in, like a few heads of garlic and a medium sized sweet onion. At some point he added a bunch of butter and molasses.

When it had cooked for a half hour, he took some crushed tomatoes from a can, put them in a blender, and then poured in the tomato liquid. The whole thing was boiling at this point, and started getting thicker.

When he was almost ready to serve he put in a half cup of brown sugar and a lemon's juice and some peel.

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Chili peppers doesn't tell me what kind he used. I am guessing they mean chiles japones. Does anyone else know? I'd like to recreate this sauce and see how much I can eat before I either die or shit myself.