WARNING! This is one of those vegetables that bites back.
Say hello to my little friend….the Naga Viper Pepper.
A jalapeno pepper is around 5000 Scoville units. This little Naga is around 1.3 million. That’s right. More than 200 times hotter. What was I thinking?
Now don’t think I have a super-green thumb for somehow stabilizing this hybrid. I found the young plant at the nursery near my house. It had a cool label that screamed “Buy me! You can have fun and mischief with me!”
He’s Adorable! 1.3 Million Scoville Units
In 2011 this was the hottest pepper in the world along with the ghost pepper. It’s been passed recently by the Trinidad Scorpion and the mad scientists pushing new ground in the pepper wars. There are entire youtube channels with tens of thousands of pepper-heads that take delight in watching the heat specialists tackle the latest incarnations. The Chocolate Bhutlah is a particularly special creature. It potentially has TRIPLE the heat of my little Naga Viper.
Watch The World’s Hottest Pepper Eaten By A Courageous Fool:
As the season progresses I’ll be posting update photos of my little plant. It’s currently early June and you can see it has at least a dozen flowers starting to germinate. I have him in a mid-sized pot as part of our movable container garden. Other than a bit of fertilizer and a watering schedule it won’t take much TLC. Look at him. He’s strong and angry, I’m sure he will grow just about anywhere.
Recipes? That’s the secret. I can’t just pull a pepper off the plant in August and chomp on it without serious impact on my productivity. Obviously great caution must be taken when cooking this stuff too. I’m talking mask, goggles and gloves. You don’t want your wallpaper peeling off or your pets and small kids getting maced.
My friend Chris has the ULTIMATE HOT PEPPER SAUCE RECIPE!
In the autumn when we do the pickling I’m going to test a SMALL piece in a jar of pickles, and perhaps some garden-grown salsa. And of course some home-made hot sauce. Stay tuned!
2015 PEPPER UPDATE: The Naga was a hot success! I saved seeds and am growing Naga Viper 2.0 beside 2 Trinidad Scorpion plants. The hot sauce was incredible, I made 6 jars, froze 4 of them, and ate all of them during the winter on pork, steak and just about every soup and stew. I love it!
What’s the hottest pepper you have ever eaten?
How did it go?
Where did you feel the heat most?
What was the next 24 hours like for you?
How do you handle the burn, with milk to something else?
Leave a comment below with your thoughts on extreme peppers!
This year our Trinidad Scorpion pepper is our hottest. I bought some Carolina Reaper extract over the winter, and found it just too “burny” and overpowering. There is a fine line between flavor and pain, isn’t there?