Food Riot

Some chillis, yesterday.

Chillies. Chilis. Chiles. The ultimate show-off ingredient. How often have you been out for a Ruby when one of the group you are with looks at the menu, sees Vindaloo and complains slightly loudly that they’d like something a lot hotter? It hasn’t happened to you? Well I have experienced this form of dick-swinging–and have then watched the dick-swinger being humbled–and I mean properly humbled by something so hot that it is akin to battery acid, only not as light, delicate and refreshing. Tosser.

I like hot food. I like to feel the burn, but I also like to taste what I’m eating. Vindaloo is for me, too hot. I don’t want to break out in a sweat and certainly don’t want to become some sort of snot-fountain as my nose runs and my eyes stream. I want to look civilised whilst I dine. And I want to look at civilised people whilst I dine too. I do not want those in my company to dribble or sweat. It is uncouth. And I don’t want them to die either for that too is uncouth, but on an industrial scale.

And think of the aftermath. I won’t dwell on it, but deep frozen toilet paper can only do so much to help, thereafter, you’re on your own.

So how hot is hot?

This excellent website has a heap of information on chillies. I have taken the liberty of nicking some of their information, which I now present to you. Please, please, please do visit their website and, buy some of their fine looking chilli based products.

The Scoville Scale is used to measure the heat of various chillis:

Chilli Heat: In 1902 Wilbur Scoville developed a method for measuring the strength of capsicum in a given pepper, which originally meant tasting a diluted version of a pepper and giving it a value. Nowadays it can be done more accurately with the help of computers to rate the peppers in Scoville units, which indicate parts per million of capsaicin. The fiery sensation of chillis is caused by capsaicin, a potent chemical that survives both cooking and freezing, but apart from the burning sensation it also triggers the brain to produce endorphins, natural painkillers that promote a sense of well being.

The Scoville scale begins at zero with mild bell peppers and moves to the lower range of peppers measuring 1,500 to 2,500 such as cascabels, four out of ten. The Jalapeño is mid range at about 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units. The eight out of ten chillis such as cayenne, aji and pequin will rate about 30,000 to 50,000 units, while the habernero which rates as one of the hottest comes somewhere between 100,00 and 500,000 units, but as can be seen above in the article has a hotter chilli been found?

Pure Capsaicin     15,000,000 – 16, 000,000
US Police Pepper Spray     5,000,000
Dorset Naga Pepper     923,000
Red Savina Pepper     350,000 – 580,000
Scotch Bonnet     100,000 – 325,000
Jamaican Hot Pepper     100,000 – 200,000
Rocoto Pepper     50,000 – 100,000
Pequin Pepper     75.000
Super Chilli Pepper     40,000 – 50,000
Cayenne Pepper     30,000 – 50,000
Tabasco Pepper     30,000 – 50,000
de Arbol Pepper     15,000 – 30,000
Aji Pepper     12,000 – 30,000
Serrano pepper     5,000 – 23,000
Hot Wax Pepper     5,000 – 10,000
Chipotle     5,000 – 10,000
Jalapeno Pepper     2,500 – 8,000
Guajilla Pepper     2,500 – 5,000
Tabasco Sauce     2,500
Pasilla Pepper     1,000 – 2,000
Ancho Pepper     1,000 – 2,000
Anaheim Pepper     500 – 2,500
Nu Mex Pepper     500 – 1,000
Santa Fe Grande Pepper     500 – 700
Pimento Pepper     100 – 500
Bell Pepper     0

The Times Newspaper article 01/04/2006: The world’s hottest chilli pepper does not come from a tropical hot spot where the local’s are impervious to it’s fiery heat but a smallholding in deepest Dorset, Uk. Some chilli’s are fierce enough to make your eyes water. Anyone foolhardy enough to eat a whole Dorset Naga would almost certainly require hospital treatment. The pepper, almost twice as hot as the previous record holder, was grown by Joy and Michael Michaud in a polytunnel at their market garden.

The couple run a business called Peppers by Post and spent four years developing the Dorset Naga. They knew the 2cm-long specimens were hot because they had to wear gloves and remove the seeds outdoors when preparing them for drying, but had no idea they had grown a record breaker. Some customers complained the peppers were so fiery that even half a small one would make a curry too hot to eat. Others loved them and last year the Michauds sold a quarter of a million of them. At the end of the season they sent a sample to a Lab in America out of curiosity.

They were stunned when the Dorset Naga gave a reading of nearly 900,000SHU. A fresh sample was then sent to a lab in New York used by the American Spice Trade Association and they recorded a record mouth numbing 923,000SHU’s. Mrs Michaud said ‘The man in the first lab was so excited he’d never had one half as hot as that. The second lab took a long time because they were checking it carefully as it was so outrageously high. The Dorset Naga was grown from a plant that originated in Bangladesh. The Michauds bought their original plant in an oriental store in Bournemouth, UK ‘we were’t even selecting the peppers for hotness but for shape and flavour when the test results came back we were gob smacked’.

The couple are now seeking Plant Variety Protection DEFRA which will mean that no one else can sell the seeds.
Anyone wanting to try the chillis will have to be patient as they are harvested only from July on. In Bangladesh the chillis grow in temperatures of well over 100F (38C) but in Dorset they thrive in poly tunnels.

Aktar Miha from the Indus Bangladesh restaurant in Bournemouth said that even in it’s home country it is treated with respect. ‘It is used in some cooking mainly in Fish curry’s but most people don’t cook with it . They hold it by the stalk and just touch their food with it ‘ he said. It has a refreshing smell and a very good taste but you don’t want to much of it. It is a killer chilli and you have to be careful and wash your hands and the cutting board. If you don’t know what you are doing it could blow your head off.