Hottest Commercial Chilli

[smch]

Can anyone name the Hottest brand of commercially available chilli. I have a Brother and Godfather who are big fans of Chilli, and I wan't to teach them a lesson Thai style.

[Jockstar]

Make your own.

[sabaijai]

Can anyone name the Hottest brand of commercially available chilli. I have a Brother and Godfather who are big fans of Chilli, and I wan't to teach them a lesson Thai style.

Do you mean what Americans call 'chili' as in chili con carne? If so you should be in the western food in thailand forum branch.

[wolf5370]

Maybe he means the vegitable. Naga Jolakia chilli isn the hottest officially (try Indian grocers).

[Totster]

Prik kii noo should do it.. just buy a load and pound 'em into a rough paste..

totster

[fxm88]

Can anyone name the Hottest brand of commercially available chilli. I have a Brother and Godfather who are big fans of Chilli, and I wan't to teach them a lesson Thai style.

The hottest you'll find is Blair's 16 Million Reserve Hot Sauce. Don't know if anything like it is available in Thailand, though.

For more see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale

[Guest endure]

Prik kii noo should do it.. just buy a load and pound 'em into a rough paste..

I've got a Thai mate who eats them like peanuts

[Totster]

Prik kii noo should do it.. just buy a load and pound 'em into a rough paste..

I've got a Thai mate who eats them like peanuts

I hope your mate has a good supply of wet wipes in the fridge...

totster

[BambinA]

[sabaijai]

Question: What is the hottest pepper ?

Answer:

The short answer to your question is the Red Savina which is a trademarked variety of habanero. The official test registered 577,000 Scoville units which makes it approximately 65 times hotter than your average jalapeno.

A few years ago there was some hype in the chilli media that a chilli in India, the Tezpur (also called the Naga Jolokia) chilli, had been tested and found hotter than the Red Savina, coming in at 855,000 Scoville units.

The original article was printed in August 2000 in the Current Science magazine, however, the article was extremely vague on the calibration of the measuring apparatus and the actual processes used. Noone has been able to relicate or confirm the results. Also, at 855,000 units, that means there is a chilli that is as powerful as many of the concentrates produced by some sauce manufacturers. Hard to accept.

Another chilli that may be a contender in the future is the chocolate habanero as many people have stated that, based on simple tasting only, they believe it is as hot as a Red Savina. As far as I know noone has tested this in the laboratory yet.

Chilli FAQs

[sabaijai]

Red Savina products

[johnh101]

Not any more, now it is the Dorset Naga

The chilli so hot you need gloves

By Simon de Bruxelles

THE world’s hottest chilli pepper does not come from a tropical hot spot where the locals are impervious to its fiery heat but a smallholding in deepest Dorset.

Some chillis are fierce enough to make your eyes water. Anyone foolhardy enough to eat a whole Dorset Naga would almost certainly require hospital treatment.

The pepper, almost twice as hot as the previous record- holder, was grown by Joy and Michael Michaud in a poly- tunnel at their market garden. The couple run a business called Peppers by Post and spent four years developing the Dorset Naga.

They knew the 2cm-long specimens were hot because they had to wear gloves and remove the seeds outdoors when preparing them for drying, but had no idea they had grown a record-breaker.

Some customers complained the peppers were so fiery that even half a small one would make a curry too hot to eat. Others loved them and the Michauds sold a quarter of a million Dorset Nagas last year. At the end of last season Mrs Michaud sent a sample to a laboratory in America out of curiosity. The owner had never tested anything like it.

According to Mrs Michaud, the hottest habañero peppers popular in chilli-eating competitions in the US generally measure about 100,000 units on the standard Scoville scale, named after its inventor, Wilbur Scoville, who developed it in 1912. At first the scale was a subjective taste test but it later developed into the measure of capsaicinoids present. The hottest chilli pepper in The Guinness Book of Records is a Red Savina habañero with a rating of 570,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU).

Mrs Michaud was stunned when the Dorset Naga gave a reading of nearly 900,000SHU. A fresh sample was sent to a lab in New York used by the American Spice Trade Association and recorded a mouth-numbing 923,000SHUs.

Mrs Michaud said: “The man in the first lab was so excited — he’d never had one even half as hot as that. The second lab took a long time because they were checking it carefully as it was so outrageously high.”

The Dorset Naga was grown from a plant that originated in Bangladesh. The Michauds bought their original plant in an oriental store in Bournemouth. Mrs Michaud said: “We weren’t even selecting the peppers for hotness but for shape and flavour. There is an element of machismo in peppers that we aren’t really interested in. When the results of the heat tests came back I was gobsmacked.”

The couple are now seeking Plant Variety Protection from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which will mean that no one else can sell the seeds.

Mrs Michaud, 48, has run the company with her husband at West Bexington, near Dorchester, for ten years. Mr Michaud, 56, has been a regular on the television chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage series, advising on vegetable growing.

Anyone wanting to try the Dorset Naga will have to be patient as chillis are harvested only from July on. In Bangladesh the chillies grow in temperatures of well over 100F (38C) but in Dorset they thrive in polytunnels.

Aktar Miha, from the Indus Bangladeshi restaurant in Bournemouth, said that even in its home country the naga chilli was treated with respect. “It is used in some cooking, mainly with fish curries, but most people don’t cook with it. They hold it by the stalk and just touch their food with it,” he said.

“It has a refreshing smell and a very good taste but you don’t want too much of it. It is a killer chilli and you have to be careful and wash your hands and the cutting board. If you don’t know what you are doing it could blow your head off.”

FROM HOT TO NOT

Scoville Heat Units

Pure capsaicin: 15m to 16m

US Police-grade pepper spray: 5m

Dorset Naga: 923,000

Red Savina habanero: 577,000

Scotch bonnet: 100,000-325,000

Jamaican hot pepper: 100,000-200,000

Cayenne pepper: 30,000-50,000

Jalapeno pepper: 2,500-8,000

Tabasco sauce: 2,500

Pimento: 100 to 500

Bell pepper: 0

[svenivan]

You can find very hot sauce in Larry's Dive in Sukh 22, BKK. He grows his own pepper up in Chiang Rai. The sauce comes in threee grades, Hot, very Hot and f££££ng Hot.

It can be worth a try!

They also sell pickled pepper.

[sabaijai]

Not any more, now it is the Dorset Naga

The chilli so hot you need gloves

By Simon de Bruxelles

THE world’s hottest chilli pepper does not come from a tropical hot spot where the locals are impervious to its fiery heat but a smallholding in deepest Dorset.

Some chillis are fierce enough to make your eyes water. Anyone foolhardy enough to eat a whole Dorset Naga would almost certainly require hospital treatment.

The pepper, almost twice as hot as the previous record- holder, was grown by Joy and Michael Michaud in a poly- tunnel at their market garden. The couple run a business called Peppers by Post and spent four years developing the Dorset Naga.

They knew the 2cm-long specimens were hot because they had to wear gloves and remove the seeds outdoors when preparing them for drying, but had no idea they had grown a record-breaker.

Some customers complained the peppers were so fiery that even half a small one would make a curry too hot to eat. Others loved them and the Michauds sold a quarter of a million Dorset Nagas last year. At the end of last season Mrs Michaud sent a sample to a laboratory in America out of curiosity. The owner had never tested anything like it.

According to Mrs Michaud, the hottest habañero peppers popular in chilli-eating competitions in the US generally measure about 100,000 units on the standard Scoville scale, named after its inventor, Wilbur Scoville, who developed it in 1912. At first the scale was a subjective taste test but it later developed into the measure of capsaicinoids present. The hottest chilli pepper in The Guinness Book of Records is a Red Savina habañero with a rating of 570,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU).

Mrs Michaud was stunned when the Dorset Naga gave a reading of nearly 900,000SHU. A fresh sample was sent to a lab in New York used by the American Spice Trade Association and recorded a mouth-numbing 923,000SHUs.

Mrs Michaud said: “The man in the first lab was so excited — he’d never had one even half as hot as that. The second lab took a long time because they were checking it carefully as it was so outrageously high.”

The Dorset Naga was grown from a plant that originated in Bangladesh. The Michauds bought their original plant in an oriental store in Bournemouth. Mrs Michaud said: “We weren’t even selecting the peppers for hotness but for shape and flavour. There is an element of machismo in peppers that we aren’t really interested in. When the results of the heat tests came back I was gobsmacked.”

The couple are now seeking Plant Variety Protection from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which will mean that no one else can sell the seeds.

Mrs Michaud, 48, has run the company with her husband at West Bexington, near Dorchester, for ten years. Mr Michaud, 56, has been a regular on the television chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage series, advising on vegetable growing.

Anyone wanting to try the Dorset Naga will have to be patient as chillis are harvested only from July on. In Bangladesh the chillies grow in temperatures of well over 100F (38C) but in Dorset they thrive in polytunnels.

Aktar Miha, from the Indus Bangladeshi restaurant in Bournemouth, said that even in its home country the naga chilli was treated with respect. “It is used in some cooking, mainly with fish curries, but most people don’t cook with it. They hold it by the stalk and just touch their food with it,” he said.

“It has a refreshing smell and a very good taste but you don’t want too much of it. It is a killer chilli and you have to be careful and wash your hands and the cutting board. If you don’t know what you are doing it could blow your head off.”

FROM HOT TO NOT

Scoville Heat Units

Pure capsaicin: 15m to 16m

US Police-grade pepper spray: 5m

Dorset Naga: 923,000

Red Savina habanero: 577,000

Scotch bonnet: 100,000-325,000

Jamaican hot pepper: 100,000-200,000

Cayenne pepper: 30,000-50,000

Jalapeno pepper: 2,500-8,000

Tabasco sauce: 2,500

Pimento: 100 to 500

Bell pepper: 0

That rating was for one sample grown in 2005. As the developers of the Dorset admit on their own website, it remains to be seen if it's repeatable.

Are these high heat level of Dorset Naga repeatable? We intend to find out in 2006.

The results will be posted here as soon as they are available.

[sabaijai]

Just came across this interesting commentary on the Scoville system in Wikipedia:

he Scoville scale is a measure of the hotness of a chilli pepper. These fruits of the Capsicum genus contain capsaicin, a chemical compound which stimulates thermoreceptor nerve endings in the tongue, and the number of Scoville heat units (SHU) indicates the amount of capsaicin present. Many hot sauces use their Scoville rating in advertising as a selling point.

It is named after Wilbur Scoville, who developed the Scoville Organoleptic Test in 1912[1]. As originally devised, a solution of the pepper extract is diluted in sugar water until the 'heat' is no longer detectable to a panel of (usually five) tasters; the degree of dilution gives its measure on the Scoville scale. Thus a sweet pepper, containing no capsaicin at all, has a Scoville rating of zero, meaning no heat detectable even undiluted. Conversely, the hottest chiles, such as habaneros, have a rating of 300,000 or more, indicating that their extract has to be diluted 300,000-fold before the capsaicin present is undetectable. The greatest weakness of the Scoville Organoleptic Test is its imprecision, because it relies on human subjectivity.

Spice heat is now usually measured by a method using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) (also known as the "Gillett Method"). This identifies the heat-producing chemicals and weights them according to their relative capacity to produce a sensation of heat. This method actually yields results, not in Scoville units, but in "ASTA pungency units." A measurement of one part capsaicin per million corresponds to about 15 Scoville units, and the published method says that ASTA pungency units can be multiplied by 15 and reported as Scoville units. This conversion is approximate, and Tainter and Grenis say that there is consensus that it gives results about 20-40% lower than the actual Scoville method would have given.[2]

If this entry is correct, I wonder why we don't hear more about the 'Gillett Method' and ASTA pungency units?

I suspect most, if not all, of us here couldn't sense the heat difference between a Dorset Naga and an ordinary habanero. A native Yucateco might be able to. In some bars in Merida (Yucatan, Mexico) the locals eat them grilled and salted as a snack.

[p1p]

Just a note of warning: Many years ago I had to visit a hospital because of a chilli overdose! I had spent some months away from the blighters and gorged myself at the first opportunity back home. They caused ulceration in the lining of my oesophagus and stomach wall, necessitating a further extended period of withdrawal symptoms.

Beware also, they can be habit forming. The consumption of chillies causes the production of natural endorphins (Endo-Morphines). These not only act as pain killers but also give you a natural high. It is possible to become hooked.