New titleholder of hottest pepper
Hot, hot, hot new pepper makes Dragon’s Breath chili seem mild
At more than three million Scoville heat units (SHU), Pepper X has ousted the Dragon’s Breath chili as the world’s spiciest pepper, Tasting Table reports.
“The pepper is coming in at 3.18 million (on the Scoville scale) ... We’re playing with fire,” creator Ed Currie said in a First We Feast Hot Ones video. That’s more than 300 times hotter than a jalapeno (2,500-8,000 SHU) and considerably more hellish than the Dragon’s Breath (2.48 million SHU).
Pepper X’s rating is being crosschecked by two universities, Currie added, and has been submitted to Guinness World Records where “it’s pending evidence.”
Hot Ones host Sean Evans said that the new pepper’s name is to be determined; Pepper X is likely a placeholder.
Currie, founder of the Pucker-Butt Pepper Company, also created the Carolina Reaper chili, which was overthrown by the Dragon’s Breath earlier this year.
“Pepper X is three times hotter than any of the other peppers that are out there available commercially. It’s twice as hot as the (Carolina) Reaper at 1.6 million. So this is a dangerous pepper,” he said in the video. “We’ve been breeding it out (for) about 10 years. When we started the cross, there were two peppers that I really loved the flavour of but neither of them was going to be hot enough for my tastes. You know, I’m an idiot. And it’s just got hotter and hotter.”
Currie is currently the only source of Pepper X. And unlike the Dragon’s Breath chili, you can experience its heat for yourself. The Last Dab is a limited-edition hot sauce produced by Heatonist and First We Feast’s show, Hot Ones. The first thousand bottles sold out in less than two minutes, Evans said.
“The Scoville heat units for the sauce is just over 2.4 million on our first test,” Currie said. It’s available for pre-order via heatonist.com at US$20 each (shipping to Canada is available).