“My cousin once ate a whole Scotch Bonnet Chilli!” “I once ate a Habanero chilli for a dare!” Or the worst one is “I have the extra hot sauce at Nandos!” YUCK! These are all the sort of things you would hear from someone who half-heartedly calls themselves a chilli addict. We’ve all met someone who thinks they know it all when it comes to the hot stuff but do you really know just how far the Scoville Scale stretches?
“Scoville Scale?” You might ask. That’s our way of measuring the varying degrees of hell that engulfs your innards after your Friday night curry or post gym burrito. The Scoville Scale is a measure of the pungency of peppers and other spicy foods and is recorded in SHUs. The scale is named after the awesome American Pharmacist, Wilbur Scoville. He developed the scale in 1912. (For anyone who is interested, he looked like a cross between Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Clunes. It’s true, check him out!)
So now you have a brief understanding of what the Scoville Scale is, you can begin to understand the heat differences between certain chillies. For example a Bell Pepper has 0 Scoville units for obvious reasons. Bell Peppers have about as much heat as cucumber. Now a jalapeno can be anywhere between 2,500 and 10,000 Scoville units. Now you’re probably thinking whoa that’s a lot, but that’s nothing. Let’s see how that measures up against some of the hottest chillies in the world!
You may have already heard of the Trinidad Scorpion “Butch T” Pepper. Known for its famous sting and once crowned the king of all chillies it has an incredible 1,463,700 Scoville Units. Crazy huh?! And what’s crazier is that the Trinidad Scorpion isn’t even the hottest anymore!
The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion is another one with an insane amount of sting! Not to be messed with, unless of course you was born with fire in your belly like Daddy Cool. The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion has one main difference to the “Butch T” though. It can measure anywhere between 1,200,000 and 2,000,000 Scoville Units. At this point you can safely say you’re going to need a fridge full of milk and some toilet roll in the fridge!
BUT WHAT’S THE HOTTEST???
Well I’m not going to tell you. Just kidding, that would be cruel! Almost as cruel as giving an unsuspecting mate a Carolina Reaper to munch on! Yes that’s it, the Carolina Reaper is currently the hottest chilli in the world! As much as it’s easy to say it can reach a whopping 2,200,000 on the Scoville Scale, if you really want to see how hot it is why not grab some of Daddy Cool’s Jeepers Reapers Revenge? You won’t regret it. (Or maybe you will)