The Hottest Pepper In The World Makes A Jalapeño Look Mild
While some foodies can't get enough spice in their culinary adventures, others will take one small bite of a jalapeño and have smoke coming out of their ears. They can be thankful they've never run across Pepper X, the hottest pepper in the world according to the "Guinness Book of World Records." The current reigning champion of heat is at least 336 times spicier than a jalapeño.
This fruit of a nightshade plant is no joke and should be eaten and handled with caution. The previous record holder — the Carolina Reaper — was responsible for sending some daring folks to the hospital after attempting to get one down. Even the person that bred the Pepper X into existence, Ed Currie, was feeling the effects of eating the world's hottest pepper for five to six hours after consumption. Founder of the cheekily named Puckerbutt Pepper Company located in Fort Mill, South Carolina, Currie (who bred both of these blazing varieties) continues to work to achieve levels of heat previously unknown to the Scoville scale.
How SHU measures the heat of the hottest peppers
Scoville Heat Units (or SHU) are the measurement system that classify how spicy a pepper is. Capsicums, like peppers and chiles, draw their heat from capsaicinoids within the plant which can be measured to determine the vegetable's exact level of spiciness. This was originally accomplished by adding a sugar-water mixture to chile samples. When professional taste testers could no longer identify a heat source in the mixture, the number of times it had to be diluted to mask the hotness was calculated and became that pepper's SHU ranking. The contemporary method for pinpointing the SHU lessens the burden on taste testers' tongues by using high-performance liquid chromatography — a scientific way of identifying the capsaicinoids within dried ground peppers.
The hottest pepper in the world registered an uncanny 2,693,000 SHU when it dethroned the Carolina Reaper, which clocks in at 2.2 million SHU. For a frame of reference, most palates can't appreciate anything hotter than a habanero, which is somewhere between 100,000 and 350,000 SHU. Bell peppers of any color have an SHU rank of zero. Even a jalapeño has an incredibly mild level of heat in comparison to Pepper X, with an average SHU of 5,000.
Why the world's hottest pepper was bred
Only the very brave would want to include Pepper X in with the many ingredients in a homemade chili. There aren't many dishes that can withstand the strident intensity of this spicy veg, but it is useful for leveling up a hot sauce. Instead of needing pounds of dried pepper to reach a desired level of spiciness, hot sauce producers may only need an eighth of a gram from a Pepper X.
It can take up to 8 to 12 generations for a new pepper strain to become stable, meaning the dedication it takes to grow them is much more than a hobby; there is a ripe market for those who want the bragging rights of downing the hottest pepper around.
Those familiar with the television show "Hot Ones" will have seen a version of this pepper blended into The Last Dab hot sauce. The show's host samples a variety of hot sauces with celebrity guests, starting with milder concoctions and incrementally increasing the level of heat until they finally attempt a small taste of The Last Dab, a sauce made with over 91% Pepper X. The often visceral reactions guests experience after endeavoring The Last Dab (as Conan O'Brien did during the most recent season finale) is a good indication of just how spicy this powerful this pepper truly is, and it's something to consider if you're curious to give it a taste test yourself.