The latest trend in epic hot spicy adventure of the last year or so has been the Carolina Reaper. Look all around the world, and you won’t find a hotter pepper. To eat one is an adventure through the jaws of hell and out Satan’s britches. However, knowing this, many people feel they must answer the call of this challenge, and they embark on that adventure by eating one, and then they very stupidly post a video of their adventure on the internet so people all around the world can see how unbelievably painful it is to eat one of these guys, and then those people want to do it themselves for some reason.
There’s a big argument over what is the hottest pepper in the world. The Guiness Book of World Records has awarded the Carolina Reaper this title, but it still goes debated among pepper enthusiasts and scholars alike. This particular pepper was tested at the University of South Carolina near where it’s grown. There are chemicals inside peppers that are grouped and named capsaicinoids (sounds like a poison), who are responsible for the heat, and by separating these chemicals from the pepper you can measure the level of that heat.
Peppers are valued on the Scoville heat scale. To give you an idea of scale, a habanero is 100,00 SHU (SHU is the measurement on the Scoville scale). So how hot does the Carolina Reaper weigh in on this scale? Every pepper in a strand is different, but this red fireball straight from the Sun’s gullet maxed out at 2,200,000 SHU and averages around 1,500,000 SHU. That’s a lot of moxy for such a little fellow. Just looking at one, you know it packs a wallop. It looks as if the skin is literally boiling over from the heat contained within, and the little red devil tail certainly is foreboding.
I love hot peppers, and a good hot sauce at that, not necessarily for the heat, but for the unique taste. Carolina Reapers are said to be sweet and delicious, if you can stand the heat that whale into you (making you wail) for a good 30 minutes afterward. Needless to say, this is not an adventure I’m looking to partake in anytime soon, and don’t recommend for any of our subscribers. Still if you went ahead and did anyway, we’d love to hear about in the comment section below.
