“The Carolina Reaper: betcha can’t eat just one!”
I like hot chiles, but 1.5 million scoville?? That’s not a chile, that’s an instrument of torture:
Ed Currie holds one of his world-record Carolina Reaper peppers by the stem, which looks like the tail of a scorpion.
On the other end is the bumpy, oily, fire-engine red fruit with a punch of heat nearly as potent as most pepper sprays used by police. It’s hot enough to leave even the most seasoned spicy food aficionado crimson-faced, flushed with sweat, trying not to lose his lunch.
Last month, The Guinness Book of World Records decided Currie’s peppers were the hottest on Earth, ending a more than four-year drive to prove no one grows a more scorching chili. The heat of Currie’s peppers was certified by students at Winthrop University who test food as part of their undergraduate classes.
But whether Currie’s peppers are truly the world’s hottest is a question that one scientist said can never be known. The heat of a pepper depends not just on the plant’s genetics, but also where it is grown, said Paul Bosland, director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University. And the heat of a pepper is more about being macho than seasoning.
“You have to think of chili heat like salt. A little bit improves the flavor, but a lot ruins it,” Bosland said.
This is me eating a Carolina Reaper:
What started as a hobby has become a business for Ed and his dozen employees, and their site is the wonderfully named Puckerbutt Pepper Company. And I am tempted by the “Extra Mean Green.”
I mean, like it hot, but I’m not suicidal.
ALSO: A handy link to the Scoville scale of chili hotness and how to cool the burn.
A Seat By The Fire 
I have been growing and cooking with the super hots for some time. The trick to cooking with things like the Carolina Reaper is to cut them open, remove the seeds, flush with water, and then cook with them. This removes much of the capsicum hot which would otherwise obscure the flavor under all that heat.
I still don’t think they’d make a tasty popper, but there’s lots more you can do with them once you get rid of some of the capsicum hotness.
Thanks for leaving a comment. 🙂 The chile-lover in me does want to give these a try sometime.