bhut jolokia

Chris Knight's avatar

Dear Readers,

Last night, while at a restaurant with a friend, I did something that I have wanted to do for years but thought would never happen, particularly after I vowed not to do it.

But I figured, “what the heck?”

Yesterday evening, at long last, I ate Bhut jolokia: the notorious “ghost pepper” from India.  Until recently, certified as the hottest pepper on the face of the Earth.

(Yes, there are photographs of this happening.  My friend took them with his iPhone but I don’t have them yet.  Suffice it to say they are rather… interesting.)

So, what did I think?  Bhut jolokia is extremely hot.  However it is not as hot as I had long anticipated.  All along I’ve had visions of my bare tongue pressed against the inner circles of Dante’s Inferno.  What I experience instead was a fiery hot pepper that made my face burn ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

I tried growing some Bhut Jolokia several months ago, but it never sprouted the peppers. I wound up giving up. At the time it was the world’s hottest chili pepper, clocking in at more than a million scorching Scovilles.

Okay, scratch that… ‘cuz there’s now a new heavyweight champion of the hot pepper scene!

Behold the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion: some peppers of which have been found to be TWO MILLION Scoville Heat Units!

(I am already determined to find some of this stuff. No I’m not suicidal…)

New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute performed quantitative analysis of a variety of superhot peppers from around the globe. How powerful is the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion?

During harvesting, senior research specialist Danise Coon said she and the two students who were picking the peppers went through about four pairs of latex gloves.

“The capsaicin kept penetrating the latex and soaking into

...
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Chris Knight's avatar

Awright, I’ve been putting this off for too long now. I knew that this day would come. Not gonna run and hide anymore. Here, live or die, I will make my stand.

This afternoon I began the process of growing my can of Bhut jolokia.

And as I said when I first wrote about coming into possession of this stuff back in February, “This is either one of the bravest things that I will have ever attempted… or it is the stoopidest of my entire life…”

The Bhut jolokia: regarded by the scientific community as THE world’s hottest naturally-occurring pepper. Native to north-eastern India, in the local tongue “Bhut jolokia” translates into “ghost pepper”. Because as the natives like to joke, one bite of this could send you to an early grave.

Spicy heat is measured in Scoville units. Regular Tabasco sauce has a “hotness” of 2,500 Scoville ...

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