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There is a new winner in the world's hottest chilli pepper category. Carolina Reaper, the reigning champion of the hottest chillies in the world, was dethroned by its new sister, Pepper X. Developed by the same creator responsible for the Reaper, Ed Curie, the latest winner measures an average of 2.69 million Scoville Heat Units (SHU), which makes it around 1.6 times hotter and spicier than the Carolina Reaper. Your regular jalapeño pepper scores between 3,000 to 8,000 SHU, so you can compare how intense the heat is.
According to the official website of the Guinness Book of World Records, creator Curie took ten years to cultivate and grow the pepper. To break his own record, he increased the capsaicin level by cross-breeding Pepper X with some of his hottest peppers.
Curie is also the founder and President of Puckerbutt Pepper Company in South Carolina, a harvester and producer of some of the hottest pepper products.
From eating it on your fast food to reading about people daring for a taste, chillies are present in our food in different ways. Here is a hot list of different kinds of chillies that are found across the world.
The Northeast's famed Bhoot Jholokia, or Ghost pepper, is sure to burn through this list with its super spice factor. So much so that these peppers were believed to be used in making chilli grenades by the Indian Army. The Bhoot Jholokia peppers are known to be so spicy that they are used to repel elephants, so they don't destroy village houses. Try it at your own risk.
You have had it on your pizzas and cocktails, so you know that Jalapeños are as fiery as they are flavourful. First cultivated in the city of Veracruz in Mexico, these delicious peppers are now grown worldwide and used widely in a plethora of cuisines. The red ones tend to grow sweeter in taste the more it ripens, packing in a good punch but also being so tasty you would want to pick them off of your pizzas and eat them, which is totally doable.
Originating in Peru, the Lemon Drop chillies have a zesty, lemony flavour. The chilli is not as spicy as its counterparts, packing instead a bunch of flavours to make a dish versatile. These chillies instantly hit you with their spice as you bite into them, leaving a tangy, bitter aftertaste akin to lemon zest.
The Isot pepper originated in Turkey and is also known as Urfa Biber, adding a nice touch of spice and flavour to dishes. The peppers are subtly smoky in flavour, which is enhanced and made better by their mildly hot and sweet taste. They are very similar in the heat range to jalapeños.
A literal mouth-numbing chilli, the Dragon's Breath chilli is one of the spiciest in the world. Developed collaboratively by chilli farmer Neal Price, Nottingham Trent University and NPK Technology, this was part of creating an essential oil with anaesthetic properties. The spice level is so high in this chilli which originated in the UK, that it is claimed it surpasses the power of police-grade pepper sprays.
“The Snake” or Naga Morich comes from the south of Bangladesh and is similar in shape to the Ghost Peppers of Northeast India. Their color changes from light green to red depending on the ripeness of the chili. In terms of the spice level, they are similar but a little spicier than the Bhoot Jholokia.
The recently dethroned defending champion of chillies, the Carolina Reaper was developed in South Carolina by breeder Ed Currie. Guinness World Records declared it the hottest chilli pepper in the world in 2017 and it was the defender of the title until Pepper X took its place recently.
