Posted on 12/27/2013 9:07:41 AM PST by JoeProBono
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the hottest peppers in the world are the Carolina Reaper peppers grown in South Carolina by Ed Currie of PuckerButt Pepper Co.
Currie spent more than four years working with students at Winthrop University to alter a sweet hot pepper from the Caribbean and give it more zip. During tests at Winthrop, the Reaper averaged just shy of 1.6 million Scoville Heat Units. To put that in perspective, a standard jalapeno pepper registers around 5,000 on the Scoville scale.
The previous record holder, the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper, was measured by New Mexico State University's Chile Pepper Institute with a mean of more than 1.2 million Scoville Heat Units.
Those are just the averages…
The hottest batch of Currie's peppers, code named HP22B -- Higher Power, Pot No. 22, Plant B -- clocked in at 2.2 million on the Scoville scale.
Currie sells Carolina Reaper seeds and hot sauces on the PuckerButt Pepper website. With names like “I Dare You Stupit” and “Purgatory,” Currie makes it fairly obvious he isn’t kidding about the heat.
This warning also helps to clarify that it might be wise to think twice before trying one of these sauces at home:
“After touching or handling hot peppers always remember to wash your hands with a product containing acidity such as lime or lemon juice. Some of our peppers are smokin’ hot and if not properly handled will temporarily damage skin tissue. When sharing your hot peppers with others, please let them know to use with caution.”
I like to hear the sizzle sound coming from the water in the toilet bowl as you’re taking a dump. Don’t do it outdoors ‘cause you might set the grass on fire.
Indeed...burns at BOTH ends. What a rush.
We are finally offering the ‘Ghost’ pepper through Jung Seed. I’ve restocked TWICE already.
These people are friggin’ NUTS! You could build a nuclear bomb wid dat chit, LOL!
I wonder if he grows giant, flavorless squash also.
For defense?
LOL. The deer ate all my habaneros this year even. They left the truly incindiary stuff alone though.
I’ve got some lightening peppers, scorpions and ghost peppers in my garage in pots right now.
In your part of the country they’ll have a devil of a time getting ripe peppers. In my experience the ghosts and scorpios don’t make around here till the end of August and that’s with our massive amounts of heat units. Although, even the green ones are hot hot hot.
My wife is from Mexico, and she and some folks on her father’s side REALLY like to eat hot stuff - to the point where their eyes are tearing and the noses are running. The wife usually cannot find anything hot enough at local restaurants, and I’ve taken to telling the waiters and waitresses to just get some battery acid and put it on her food.
However, she will only dabble a bit with the ghost peppers, as they’re 5 times hotter than the habaneros that most normal people (like me) think are alien chemical weapons from Hell. Can’t wait to tell her about these evil little sumbitches.
Nahh, that just tastes like dirt and vinegar. Sometimes folks use kerosene heaters to help the crop yield, the peppers raised this way have a flavor of diesel.
I do like a nice grilled serrano or jalepeno, or habanero chopped with red onion and a tiny amount of lime zest and tequila. Ghost chili with Raita too. yum.
I make buffalo wing sauce with cayenne pepper sauce (Durkee’s). I boil it down a little, mix in some Heinz 57 and honey. I adjust the heat by the amount of vinegar I boil off and how much 57/honey I add. The cayennes are about the limit of what I enjoy.
Agreed. I discussed this with a Korean friend of mine. I think it can be said that Korean food is one of the spiciest, and he said he has no use for spicyness for spicyness sake. "There's got to also be flavor - otherwise, what's the point?"
I might also add, he gets me some REALLY good stuff straight from his family in Korea. I put it in my soups. Yum!
I used to dice up serranos and add them to a garden salad.
Yummy.
A little bit goes a long way with some of these nasty little preparations, and by a "little bit", I mean a toothpick dipped in the sauce and added to a bowl of already-hot salsa.
I had one a few months ago that could have been used by the Marines to clear out Japanese caves in the Pacific.
Quaker Steak and Lube's Triple Atomic wing sauce has a Scoville Heat index of 500,000, or so they claim. They are indeed hot. We like to joke that they leave an exit wound.
I don’t consume them often, but I do like habaneros. They have a very nice flavor along with their gullet-scorching heat.
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