Just last month a kid died after trying something called a “one chip challenge” with one chip that had Carolina Reaper and Naga Viper peppers on it.
It’s thought a cerebral artery spasmed. The vendor, Paqui, had the chips pulled from shelves. And this “X” pepper has even more capsaicin? Hate to say it, Ed Currie, but you’ve bred yourself out of the running. Now X (sic) amount of people will die before your new pepper is deemed some sort of controlled substance. Or neo-Nazis/Trump supporters make it into their own pepper spray?
Someone here thinks the Ghost Pepper tastes “like ass”; it’s about as hot as I go and Trader Joe’s has a salsa they market with the ghost in it. The salsa itself? C’est fantastique! I don’t know about an individual “naked” Ghost Pepper, though.
yeah, no thank you on “pepper x” from this pepperhead.
Melinda’s jolokia sauce is damn tasty and very hot. i like it. my friend and fellow pepperhead, Djimon, gave me two bottles of a newly-imported hot sauce from Trinidad: Trinidadian scorpion pepper sauce. i put a heroic amount on a cheeseburger and it was super-duper freaking hot! like Mr. Currie in the OP, i felt this in my gut for hours! no cramps, not painful, but weirdly radiating from my inside my belly for the rest of the day. wild! one drop in a batch of mac-n-cheese and good to go. you will feel the heat.
also on a related note, i am currently growing one of Ed Currie’s breeds of extreme pepper - the chocolate bhutla. it is a cross of Carolina reaper and naga jolkia (ghost pepper). supposed to be similar to the scorpion pepper with good flavor. we’ll see…
meanwhile, my habaneros are all in, fermented and blended and resting in jars before bottling.
oh, yeah… i kinda like peppers.
I’ve not had that one in particular, but given how entirely not-hot all the “hot” salsas are that I’ve tried from them, I’m guessing they wave a ghost pepper over the salsa before bottling it, or put in homeopathic quantities.
Scotch Bonnet is pretty tasty for a super hot. I don’t go any hotter after growing and tasting Ghost and Scorpion (they taste lake burnt smoke to me, not at all good for hot sauce or anything else for that matter).
@CanadianBeaver: I won trivia night at a local bar once for not only knowing what this pretend pepper was called, but also for saying the whole name correctly.
All right @blackeye: you win this round of internet!
I love the flavor of certain hot peppers, but I don’t do heat very well. So this news of something several orders of magnitude hotter than the hottest foods I eat regularly…heavy meh. Everyone’s got to have a hobby, I guess. But I just saw a video of this Ed Currie guy describing Cholula as “basically just salt,” so I’m not sure I’d trust his taste buds about anything that actually has flavor. They’re toast.
i was with you until the Cholula. one likes what one likes, but i tend to agree that Cholula is weak sauce. too sweet, vinegary and flavors of dried chilies - not fresh - and, yes, salt.
not trying to start any kind of thing. i know peppers are different for every single person who tries them. for me, Cholula is on par with buffalo wing sauce - the only heat is in overuse of vinegar. YMMV
The variance in mileage seems to be mainly between me, and people who eat a lot of very hot chiles, you and Mr. Currie included. Jokes about incinerating internal organs aside, habitually eating very hot foods changes the way you experience them. Cholula is an enjoyable way to add spice to non-spicy food. I will continue to use it, because it’s enough for me.
respect.
like i said, not starting anything.
you are correct that consuming ever hotter peppers does change one’s perception and tastes. i also do not think everyone should try to push their limits.
like you say, “everyone needs a hobby” and i admit one of mine is growing hot peppers and making various sauces that i trade with friends and neighbors for treats from their own gardens (some of the mangoes i use in my mango/habanero sauce is from their trees, some from my own) and when i am very lucky, i trade for tuna, mahi or grouper caught here.
it’s a living, i guess.
