Bhut Jolokia is No Joke...ia
• ~300 words • 1 minute read
![Bhut Jolokia](/media/2011/bhut-jolokia.jpg)
Holy moly, this pepper is hot. Wow. The Naga or Bhut Jolokia, commonly called the Ghost Chili in the US, most likely because it will continue to scald your taste-buds long after you're dead, is typically regarded as the hottest pepper in the world.
Any food product that has a subsection labeled "Use as a Weapon" on Wikipedia has me intrigued, so I had to buy some. I also have a penchant for hot and spicy foods, but this may be above and beyond my comfort zone. I bought a small dried can almost a year ago and sprinkle it on my food every so often when I'm in the mood to ruin a perfectly good meal and sweat profusely.
To use some science and numbers to explain how hot this pepper is, it scores somewhere between 855,000 and 1,000,000 on the Scoville scale. I have only two things to say about that:
- What kind of terrifying scale goes up to 1,000,000? Was it designed by mad scientists? I bet it was.
- Holy shit, I don't even need a comparison - something that's rated 1,000,000 on a hotness scale is probably going to kill me.
I'll give you a comparison anyway: Tabasco comes in at about 2,500-5,000. Pure capsaicin comes in at a stupid 15 to 16 million.
Recommended uses include:
- Dares & challenges.
- Ruining perfectly edible food. Pastas, rice dishes, beans, meats - there's really nothing you can't ruin with this stuff.
- Simulating the effects of pepper spray if you throw some in boiling water and neglect to turn on the vent, as I did.
You will find no shortage of these peppers and their seeds available online, but I recommend the powdered variety. If you're a pansy like me, it will last you a long time, but if not you could be bold and buy the 3-pack I suppose. Real stone-cold killers buy the 2.2lb bag and probably rub it in their eyes in the morning the wake themselves up.