It Won't Be the Bhut of Many Jolokias

This
little devil gets a rating of over one million href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale" rel="tag">Scoville
heat units.  



i-28bdf5966e8d8d947d869ae5adb1008a-bhut_jolokia.jpg



It's
the Bhut
Jolokia
(ghost chile), also called the href="http://www.fiery-foods.com/dave/sagajolokia.asp" rel="tag">Naga
Jolokia.
 According to the href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/articles/2007/08/01/1185647946289.html"
rel="tag">Brisbane Times, the
growers hope it will replace the sagging tea farming in northeast
India...



Researchers
at the renowned href="http://spectre.nmsu.edu/dept/welcome.html?t=chile"
rel="tag">Chile Pepper Institute at href="http://www.nmsu.edu/" rel="tag">New Mexico
State University have confirmed that it is the hottest chile
pepper.



face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">i-96d6bffe1866762a397c7944e9798e24-capsaicin.JPG



Pure capsaicin gets a rating of 15 million SHUs.  Pepper spray
is 2 million.  Tabasco® Habanero Sauce (their hottest)
is 7 to 8
thousand.



face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">i-ae7aa22fdfc47d52263b58ce3d5954ca-indiamap_assam270e.jpg



The product is grown in the states of Assam, Nagaland, and Manipur.
 



According to the Brisbane article:



...Around
here, in the hills of northeastern India,
it's called the "bhut jolokia" - the "ghost chilli." Anyone who has
tried it, they say, could end up an apparition.



"It is so hot you can't even imagine," said the farmer, Digonta Saikia,
working in his fields in the midday sun, his face nearly invisible
behind an enormous straw hat. "When you eat it, it's like dying."



Outsiders, he insisted, shouldn't even try it. "If you eat one," he
told a visitor, "you will not be able to leave this place."



The rest of the world, though, should prepare itself.



Because in this remote Indian region facing bloody insurgencies,
widespread poverty and a major industry - tea farming - in deep
decline, hope has come in the form of this thumb-sized chilli pepper
with frightening potency and a superlative rating: the spiciest chilli
in the world. A few months ago, Guinness World Records made it official.



If you think you've had a hotter chilli pepper, you're wrong.



The smallest morsels can flavour a sauce so intensely it's barely
edible...



The detective work involved in finding an verifying the world's hottest
chile pepper is described href="http://www.fiery-foods.com/dave/sagajolokia.asp">here.




i-b141ea4585921440b76011f655bbabd3-hplc_lab_g2_150.jpgTypical HPLC chromatogram:

The peaks represent the amount of the

various capsaicinoids found in a chile sample.


Tags

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I've href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/08/it_wont_be_the_bhut_of_many_jo.php">written href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/08/bhut_jolokia_update.php">before about the world's hotter chle pepper: the bhut jolokia, rated at over 1 million scoville units. ( href="…
World's Hottest Chile Pepper Discovered: Researchers at New Mexico State University recently discovered the world's hottest chile pepper. Bhut Jolokia, a variety of chile pepper originating in Assam, India, has earned Guiness World Records' recognition as the world's hottest chile pepper by…
I'd assumed that Mad Dog's Revenge Habanero & Chile Extract would be the spiciest "sauce" of the bunch. I put sauce in quotations because it isn't a hot sauce, it's a food additive. The label warns not to use this as a hot sauce because it is way too spicy. How spicy? The label says, "1,000,…
src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_VbG-d6SeGuA/RePVVb_nxrI/AAAAAAAAAD8/6QbLROwzDEk/s400/anandita-tamuly-eats-bhut-jolokia.jpg" align="left" height="344" width="238"> face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">I had not seen this when I first posted about the href="http://spectre.nmsu.edu/dept/…

very hot yes, but they are not as scary as made out. any person experienced with eating very hot food a lot will find them very hot but managable. chop a whole one up onto a pizza. delicious!

By chilli lover (not verified) on 20 Sep 2010 #permalink

THIS IS AWESOME! I'm going to order some seeds from Tradewindsfruit.com. I can't to get these babies cookin'!