Currie’s peppers are world’s hottest
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 red fruit with a punch of heat nearly as potent as most pepper sprays used by police.
Last month, The Guinness Book of World Records decided Currie’s peppers were the hottest on Earth. 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.
The science of hot peppers revolves around chemical compounds called capsaicinoids. The higher the concentration the hotter the pepper, said Cliff Calloway, the Winthrop University professor whose students tested Currie’s peppers.
The heat of a pepper is measured in Scoville Heat Units. Zero is bland, and a regular jalapeno pepper registers around 5 000 on the Scoville scale. Currie’s world record batch of Carolina Reapers comes in at 1 569 300 Scoville Heat Units, with an individual pepper measured at 2.2 million.
Pharmacist Wilbur Scoville devised the scale 100 years ago, taking a solution of sugar and water to dilute an extract made from the pepper. A scientist would then taste the solution and dilute it again and again until the heat was no longer detected. So the rating depended on a scientist’s tongue, a technique that Calloway is glad is no longer necessary.
“I haven’t tried Ed’s peppers. I am afraid to,” Calloway said. “I bite into a jalapeno – that’s too hot for me.”
Now, scientists separate the capsaicinoids from the rest of the peppers and use liquid chromatography to detect the exact amount of the compounds. A formula then converts the readings into Scoville’s old scale.
The hot pepper market is expanding. In less than five years, the amount of hot peppers eaten by Americans has in- creased by 8 percent, according to US Department of Agriculture statistics.
Currie’s world record had created a stir in the world of chiliheads, said Ted Barrus, a blogger who has developed a following by videotaping himself eating hot peppers and posting the videos on YouTube under the name “Ted The Fire Breathing Idiot”. – Sapa-AP