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Why Did I buy the “Ghost Pepper”?

Posted on | May 1, 2009 | 7 Comments

I don’t really know, is the simple answer. I suppose I simply had to have it.

And I suppose it makes me feel better, in that way that four deadbolts and a weapon might make someone feel better when living in a deadly neighborhood.

This, you see, is no ordinary pepper. The Naga Jolokia or Bhut Jolokia pepper is the Guinness Book of Records world-record holder for the hottest pepper in the world. It’s name, in Sanskrit, means King Cobra as people who’d eaten it said it’s bite was akin to being struck by a deadly snake. This, of course, caused people around the world to immediately seek it out for all manner of ingestion.

But what measurement scale, you might ask, do world-record pepper judges use to measure heat – to measure the venom of this snake-bite pepper? It’s called the Scoville scale. Let’s take a moment to talk about it.

Wilbur Scoville invented his scale in 1912 as a measure of heat in peppers accounting for the amount of capsaicin they contain. Capsaicin is the chemical compound that stimulate nerve endings in our skin and taste buds.

To provide some perspective for the insanity of owning, and considering the use of such a pepper, let’s provide some perspective.

Jalapeno = 2500 – 8000 rating

Habanero = 100,000 – 300,000

Bhut Jolokia = 855,000 – 1,050,000

Law enforcement grade pepper spray = 500,000 to 5,300,000

Re-read that for a moment and consider your experiences eating, at the very least, Jalapenos and Habaneros, peppers that most people have had exposure to and that, given your sensitivity to capsaicin, may have caused you extreme discomfort.

Now consider that the Bhut Jolokia is likely 5 times hotter than your hottest-ever pepper experience.

As Wikipedia says on the matter, they are often used to develop smoke bombs that keep elephants at a distance. Ummm, and I’m thinking of eating this?!

When I first bought these, Dan Hayward, the knowledgeable Co-Owner of the Savory Spice Shop in Denver, Boulder and Littleton, Colorado, opened the bottle for me and told me to hover my nose just above the opening. “Smell that,” he said with a wicked grin, “You can tell something crazy is going on with these things.” Dan’s explanation is probably the better than any I can provide. Even as I sit here writing, I can smell their “craziness” through the two casings of plastic bags in which they reside (I store them inside a jar, as well, in my cupboard.) My nose is twitching slightly and my eyes have the faintest itch. Paint thinner doesn’t have this effect on me at distance.

So, what am I going to do with these – besides turning them into the police? I’d love for you, oh great sages of food-o-sphere, to share some ideas. As Dan said, you’d probably need to make an inordinate amount of curry, and then shave a small bit into the batch to create some seriously deadly heat. I’m not sure I’m up for that. I’m looking for non-curry interpretations, something that will sustain some heat, but not kill me or cause the neighbors to go into convulsions.

So, any ideas that don’t involve wearing a hazmat suit? Fortunately, I don’t have any immediate need to keep elephants at bay, but I would like to try to use these as some sort of harissa maybe in the next few weeks – if it keeps large, stampeding animals from my home, all the better.

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