For nearly a decade, the Carolina Reaper held the Guinness World Record for the hottest chili pepper on the planet, with a spiciness level averaging 1.641 million Scoville heat units (SHU).
But in October 2023, that spicy stalwart finally lost its crown, to a shrivelled yellow-green creation known as Pepper X. It was recognized as the hottest pepper ever to be independently tested, with an average of 2.693 million SHU.
Both the Carolina Reaper and Pepper X were bred by Ed Currie, the founder of the PuckerButt Pepper Company, based in South Carolina. Currie cross-bred the Reaper with another pepper to produce Pepper X, giving it a unique set of particularly powerful capsaicinoids – the compounds that react with nerve receptors to send the sensation of heat to the brain.
Just how hot is 2.693 million SHU? Your run-of-the-mill jalapeño measures between 2,000 and 8,000 SHU, while habaneros and Scotch bonnets are significantly hotter, in the range of 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville heat units.
Currie said that it took him about five or six hours to recover from his stomach cramping after he tasted Pepper X raw, compared to less than an hour for the Carolina Reaper. He reported that the flavor only lasted a moment before the heat became overwhelming. Apparently, the taste is far more palatable when used in a hot sauce, and Pepper X products are now available on the PuckerButt website.
Unsurprisingly, Ed Currie is already hard at work on breeding what could eventually become another record-breaking pepper, though it’s a lengthy process, requiring up to 10 generations of plants to stabilize the characteristics of the new hybrids.
Super hot ones:
- Currie spends around half the year processing peppers to turn into hot sauce, pepper powder, and various other products, while the other half is spent on breeding efforts, cross-pollinating plants to select for attributes like heat, flavor, and color.
- The ongoing competition to create the world’s hottest chili pepper began in earnest in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the introduction of the Red Savina and later the ghost pepper. The ghost pepper, also known as bhut jolokia or Naga king chili, was the first with a SHU measurement of over 1 million units.
- Now, there is an entire category of chilis over 1 million SHU, known as “super hots.” These peppers are so hot that any contact with them could cause chili burn – not just the seeds or pith.
