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Anyone who is a true furnace face will remember that name. It is the new hottest chili pepper on the planet.
Bhut Jolokia comes in at 1,001,304
Scoville heat units. That's nearly
twice as hot as Red Savina, the variety it replaces as the hottest. By comparison, a New Mexico green chili contains about 1,500 Scoville units; an average jalapeno measures at about 10,000.
The Guinness Book of Records agrees that
Paul Bosland, a regents professor at New Mexico State University, has discovered the world's hottest chili pepper. The Bhut Jolokia is a naturally occurring hybrid native to the Assam region of northeastern India.
In it's dried form, photo right, it may have as many as 1 million
Scoville heat units.
The name translates as ghost chili, Bosland said.
"We're not sure why they call it that, but I think it's because the chili is so hot, you give up the ghost when you eat it," he said.
You can get seeds for this horrifyingly hot pepper at the
here at the
NMSU College of Agriculture and Home Economics, where they also supply the answer to the burning question: How do you get the burning sensation to stop after
consuming chile peppers?
Answer? The best way to ease the burning sensation is to drink milk, or eat yogurt or any other dairy product. A substance found in dairy products known as casein, helps to disrupt the reaction. This substance, which is a lipophilic phosphoprotein, acts like a detergent and literally strips capsaicin from its receptor binding site. If you get the oil on your skin, you may want to rub it with rubbing alcohol first, then soak in milk, this seems to alleviate the burning. If you get it in your eyes, the only thing you can do is repeatedly rinse with water or saline. Be very careful when handling hot chiles, especially pod types like habanero as there are reports of these chiles actually blistering the skin. Gloves are recommended when handling or peeling any types of hot chile.
*a measure of hotness for a chili