മാര്‍ . 25, 2024 15:25 Back to list

The Untold Truth Of The World's Hottest Peppers Odm Red Dried Chilies

Do you like it hot? Like really, really hot? Every family has one, that person who doesn't think something is hot enough until their lips start changing color and they break out in a sweat. Chili peppers aren't just about heat, though. If used correctly, they're about adding a whole different flavor to some of your favorite foods. There's a difference, though, between peppers that are hot and peppers that are dangerous. While there are the peppers that will make your curry something special, there are also peppers that can be weaponized — that's taking hotness to a whole new level. Those dangerously fiery peppers are the peppers we're talking about here. Here's the untold truth of the world's hottest peppers.

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Interpreting the Scoville scale

It's impossible to talk about hot peppers without talking about the Scoville scale — the way the hotness of peppers is rated. It was created in 1912 by Wilbur Scoville (via Chilli World), who was on the hunt for a reliable way of measuring heat. Scoville ended up taking a portion of pepper extract and diluting it in sugar water. The amount of dilution needed before the pepper is undetectable is the Scoville rating.

So, let's take a jalapeno. That has a Scoville rating of between 2500 and 8000, meaning it has to be diluted that many times before the heat of the pepper is completely neutralized by the solution. For more perspective, a meal that's considered restaurant-quality spicy generally rates between 500 and 1000, while pure capsaicin is at the very high end of the scale with a rating of 15 to 16 million. Today, there's a more scientific way of determining Scoville ratings, and according to Pepper Seeds, it's done by using chromatography to measure the amount of pure capsaicin in a pepper.

Why we interpret hot peppers as hot

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The other thing we need to talk about is what's going on at our side of the equation, and BBC took a look at just why we taste things as being hot and spicy. Capsaicin activates receptors in your tongue, the same ones kick-started by pain. Capsaicin is something of an anomaly, as it's one of the few activators that isn't actually doing any damage, but still sets off receptors.

Studies have found your tongue catches on to this little trick, and gradually, receptors recognize that burning sensation doesn't actually pose a threat. They'll stop reacting, and that's called capsaicin desensitization. It also interacts weirdly with ethanol, which changes the tolerance threshold for capsaicin sensitivity. Try it — have a jalapeno with a warm beer. It will be spicier than if you were drinking it with an ice cold beer. And finally, capsaicin reaction to these non-taste bud receptors is the reason you absolutely don't want to rub your eyes after you've been slicing peppers — all parts of your body will let you know capsaicin is present.

The entire industry was started by one man

Hot peppers have always been around, but it turns out there's one man you can thank for essentially creating the entire industry. That's Dr. Fabian Garcia, a horticulturist from New Mexico State University's very first graduating class, the class of 1894. In addition to planting the first trees of New Mexico's pecan industry, he standardized hot pepper breeds, creating the genetic basis of today's peppers.

It's no coincidence that his alma mater is now the site of the Chile Pepper Institute, and according to director Dr. Paul Bosland (via Desert Exposure), Garcia released his landmark pepper, the New Mexico No. 9, in 1921. Before that pepper, hot peppers were little more than a spice — now they're a multi-million dollar industry.

Dr. Rothwell's hallucinations

It's human nature to try to do everything bigger and better than the next person, and that's not only led to people breeding hotter chilis and making hotter dishes, but also to people trying to actually eat those dishes. In 2013, CNN announced after more than 300 people tried and failed to eat a curry dish filled with 20 Infinity chilis, one man had finally succeeded.

He was Dr. Ian Rothwell, and he managed to finish off the entire plate of curry — a plate so hot anyone who's cooking it needs to wear a gas mask and other protective gear. It took him an hour, and we'll put his achievement in perspective using the Scoville scale. A Tabasco's Original Red Sauce clocks in at between 2500 and 5000 units, while a single Infinity chili is rated between 1,200,000 and 2 million. You know, give or take. Rothwell ate the curry with only a pint of beer to help, took a walk partway through, and started hallucinating. His wife found him wandering the streets while having a conversation with his own hand, but the pep talk apparently worked.

The Dragon's Breath chili was accidental

In May 2017, The Telegraph reported on a Welsh fruit grower who had accidentally created the new world's hottest chili (at the time). They say he had been trying to come up with a neat new entry for the Chelsea Flower Show when he created the Dragon's Breath, which clocked in at a whopping 2.48 million on the Scoville scale. (Even a habanero is between 100,000 and 350,000!)

Mike Smith's chili pepper displaced the Carolina Reaper at the top of the scale, but he says he was looking for something more beautiful than spicy. Spicy he got, though, and according to experts at Nottingham Trent University, it's so hot it could be used as an alternative to anesthetic for people who can't use traditional medicines.

It's hotter than US Army-grade pepper spray (which is about 2 million on our Scoville scale), and in typical British fashion, Smith says he's "chuffed to bits" over his creation.

Ed Currie's pepper breeds

Instagram via @puckerbuttpeppercompany

When it comes to the world of growing and breeding hot peppers, Smokin' Ed Currie is at the top of the list. He's the head of the PuckerButt Pepper Company, creator of the Carolina Reaper, and when asked if he'd recommend someone actually try to eat one, he said (via Munchies), "[...] I don't recommend it at all. It is very stupid and I am an idiot for doing it." He likens a quick test of a Carolina Reaper to "licking the sun," and that's perspective.

For Currie, there's a practical reason for creating something so unbearably hot. For companies who rely on chilis to give their product an extra kick of heat, they can buy Carolina Reapers and use a much smaller number of peppers to spice up an industrial-sized batch. "It only takes an ounce of my stuff compared to a pound of someone else's to produce the same amount of heat," Currie says, and that's just smart economics.

Currie told The LA Times it all began when he read a scientific paper suggesting the chemicals in peppers might help protect against the development of heart disease and cancer, and that's a cause we can all get behind.