Ed Currie’s Carolina Reaper: World’s Hottest Pepper Is Said To Be 100Times Hotter Than Jalapenos!

Now Guinness makes it official and declares the world's hottest pepper is in South Carolina.

Ed Currie’s Carolina Reaper pepper has recently declared by the Guinness World Records as the hottest on earth. The pepper which looks like the tail of a scorpion is hot enough to leave even the most seasoned spicy food fanatic crimson-faced, flushed with sweat, trying not to lose his lunch. Bred and cultivated by Ed Currie of the PuckerButt Pepper Company in South Carolina, the heat nearly as potent as most pepper sprays used by police.

It was certified by students at Winthrop University who test food as part of their undergraduate classes. The batch of peppers that was tested was coded as HP22B means "Higher Power, Pot No. 22, Plant B" and the result is 1,569,300 SHU on the Scoville scale with peak levels of over 2,200,000 SHU. It is a hybrid of capsicum chinense species. The science of hot peppers concentrates on chemical compounds called capsaicinoids. Cliff Calloway of Winthrop University professor stated that the higher  the concentration, the hotter the pepper.

However, the actual hotness of a pepper is almost impossible to verify given the variables that go in to making such a determination. According to Paul Bosland, Director of Chili Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University that the heat of a pepper depends not just on the plant’s genetics but also where it is grown and more about being macho than seasoning.

Scoville scale is used to measure the spiciness of a pepper described in Scoville Heat Units, named after Pharmacist Wilbur Scoville who formulated the scale around 100 years ago. Zero is bland, and a regular jalapeno pepper registers around 5,000 on the scale.

Currie has been fascinated in peppers all his life. Ever since he got the taste of a sweet hot pepper from the Caribbean a decade ago, he has been determined to breed the hottest pepper he can.

He added that his peppers are not just about heat, he aims for sweetness too and with a goal to enhance the flavor of foods. Currie has about a dozen employees and he continues his search for the hottest flavors he can grow.