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Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Indian chili pepper is world's hottest

The bhut jolokia - or "ghost pepper" because one bite of this could send you to an early grave - of northeastern India is now officially the world's hottest chili pepper

A chile's spiciness can be scientifically measured by calculating its content of capsaicin, the chemical that gives a pepper its bite, and counting its Scoville units.

And how hot is the bhut jolokia?

As a way of comparison: Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units. Your basic jalapeƱo pepper measures anywhere from 2,500 to 8,000. The previous record holder, the Red Savina habanero, was tested at up to 580,000 Scovilles.

The bhut jolokia crushed those contenders, testing at 1,001,304 Scoville units.

Over a million Scoville units?! Geeeeeez...

For a month now I've been trying Dave's Ultimate Insanity sauce on quite a few things, including mixing it with chili and salsa. It's so powerful that the most I've used at any one time is 3 drops of the stuff: any more than that and it's unbearably hot. Well, Dave's Ultimate Insanity has been measured to be, at most, about 250,000 Scoville units. I can't begin to imagine what a million would feel like. But I must admit, I am terribly curious as to how bhut jolokia tastes. Maybe someday I'll get to try it.

2 comments:

bmovies said...

It's summertime. Isnt it hot enough for you down South?

:-)

Chris Knight said...

Got up to about 97 here today and it's going to stay hot the rest of the week :-)