India Brings Us The ‘Ghost Chili’: New World Record for the Hottest Chili Pepper

Posted by Mike Richard on August 3, 2007
Filed under: Food + Booze

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I’m a big spicy food buff. I love hot. Hot wings, hot sauce, hot anything. And I’ve no doubt Southeast Asia will come through for me in that department. But this is a bit much …

First, there was the jalapeño. Then came the habanero. Then gasoline. Now: India brings us the ghost chili. The new Guinness Book of World Records record holder for the world’s hottest chili pepper.

Via MSNBC:

“It is so hot you can’t even imagine,” said the farmer, Digonta Saikia, working in his fields in the midday sun, his face nearly invisible behind an enormous straw hat. “When you eat it, it’s like dying.”

Uh-huh, right. It’s nothing new. I’ve seen the hot sauce bottles with the cartoon skeleton and the steam coming out his ears. The sauces with names like “The Reaper” and “Oh My God, This is So Hot. No Seriously … Someone Please Kill Me.”

If you think you’ve had a hotter chili pepper, you’re wrong.

The smallest morsels can flavor a sauce so intensely it’s barely edible. Eating a raw sliver causes watering eyes and a runny nose. An entire chili is an all-out assault on the senses, akin to swigging a cocktail of battery acid and glass shards.

Mmmkay. I can’t say I’ve ever tried eating either, let alone consuming those two lovely things together. It’s 200 times hotter than Tabasco sauce and nearly twice as hot as a Red Savina habanero pepper. If you’ve ever had the latter, I think you can understand just how hot the ghost chili pepper is.

And if it’s that much fun eating them, just imagine the joy of [ahem]passing[ahem] them.

Enjoy your weekend! (Oh and pass the Pepto, please)

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Vagabondish editor, Mike Richard, lives in Rhode Island - a spit of land in the northeastern U.S. He is a professional web designer and travel junkie with an unhealthy addiction to backpacking, camping, hiking and seeing the world. He enjoys knit hats, small, declarative sentences and speaking in the third person.



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Comments

Eric
August 5th, 2007 - 7:35 pm

I shudder at the thought!