A new pepper is coming in hot as the spiciest in the world, Guinness World Records has announced.
For a decade, the Carolina Reaper chilli pepper was ruled to be the hottest chilli pepper in the world. But now “Pepper X” has taken its crown.
The spiciness of a pepper is measured on what is known as the Scoville scale, which was established by the pharmacist Wilbur Scoville in 1912. The scale measures the concentration of capsaicin, the primary component of a pepper that makes it spicy.
Capsaicin “causes a burning sensation when it makes contact with human tissue”, according to Guinness World Records.
Pepper X measures 2.69m heat units on the Scoville scale. That beats the Carolina Reaper chilli pepper by over 1m units, laboratory tests conducted at South Carolina’s Winthrop University in August showed.
Both Pepper X and the Carolina Reaper were created by the renowned pepper breeder appropriately named Ed Currie. The man whose last name is phonetically identical to the often spicy dish called Pepper X’s new title “a team effort”.
In order to create Pepper X, Currie crossbred the Carolina Reaper with a pepper his friend sent him from Michigan that was “brutally hot”.
Only five people – including Currie – had tasted Pepper X when its record-breaking status was announced on Monday.
Pepper X was revealed in the popular YouTube show Hot Ones. The show’s creator and host Sean Evans tries chicken wings of varying heat levels with celebrity guests such as the actor Jennifer Lawrence, the chef Gordon Ramsay, the singer Billie Eilish, the basketball champion Shaquille O’Neal and the musician Dave Grohl.
“When we bred this pepper out, first thing we looked for is something to raise that heat level to what we thought was going to be the maximum, and the second thing was flavor,” Currie told Evans on the show.
Consumers will be able to test Pepper X exclusively in the form of commercially sold hot sauce.
Due to past experience, Currie intends to protect Pepper X more fiercely under his intellectual property. Therefore, he will not publicly release the pods and seeds of Pepper X.
“People have been trying to steal [the Carolina Reaper pepper] for the last 10 years,” Currie said. “There are also some high corporations who want to take what’s not theirs, and they’re willing to pay other people to do it.
“We have to protect ourselves. This is our pepper and we are going to take the world out with it.”
Currie said he still felt the heat of the pepper more than three hours later and it left him with “horrible cramps”. Despite this, he said his pain was not in vain.
“All the time and effort that we put in at the farm to make sure this got stabilized and became the hottest pepper in the world is now validated,” Curried said when awarded the record for hottest pepper. “I can’t tell you how excited I am right now.”
