The Flaming Hot Vegetable

Someone has bred a new pepper verified by the Guinness World Records as the hottest pepper in the world.

It’s called Pepper X.

I watched a taste test video on YouTube where four men tried it. The guy who created it and another man ate a whole pepper.

The common jalapeño ranks as one of the mildest peppers at a Scoville Heat Unit of 2,000 to 8,000 SHU.

Bell peppers measure at a whopping 0 SHU’s. We grew some Habeneros last year, and Habaneros measure 100,000 to 350,000 SHU’s.

I ate Carolina Reaper wings at Buffalo Wild Wings last year. It measures at 1.64 million SHU’s.

The new pepper, the Pepper X, measures 2.693 million SHU’s. Jesus, be a fence.

The man who bred the pepper said that after eating a whole pepper, he lay outside in the rain on a marble slab. He felt the heat for 3.5 hours. Then the cramps started. But we won’t talk about that.

As I watched those men eat the peppers, I started sweating. All I did was hold the phone in my hand, and I felt the heat.

Then I watched another guy smother his pulled pork sandwich in the Pepper X sauce, and he just about lost his mind.

Heat in a pepper comes from capsaicin, which comes from the white, pithy part of the pepper that the seeds grow on inside the pepper.

Any part of the pepper that touches the stem inside the pepper or the seeds growing on it will be hot.

Smokin’ Ed, the guy who bred the Carolina Reaper and Pepper X, said he tried pure capsaicin, which measured at, get this, over 16 million Scoville Heat Units.

He said he couldn’t feel his face, didn’t know where he was, and lay in a fetal position for four hours. Let’s just say it would behoove us to stay away from pure capsaicin.

Don’t be like Smokin’ Ed.

Honestly, it may be in our best interest to stay away from anything a guy named Smokin’ Ed creates.

But I know of at least two people I would consider my friends who will probably buy Pepper X plants for their garden next year.

to the heat junkies,
– Caleb