'I was groaning in pain': World's hottest chilli revealed after 10-year effort to break record

‘I was groaning in pain’: World’s hottest chilli revealed after 10-year effort to break record

Oct 18, 2023

Pepper X has officially been named the world’s hottest chilli.

Guinness World Records announced it had replaced the Carolina Reaper.

Both varieties were created by Ed Currie – which means he’s broken his own record.

Pepper X has been a decade-long obsession. It took him 10 years to get Pepper X from the first crossbreed experiment to the record.

This includes five years of testing to prove it was a distinct plant with a different fruit – and documenting its average heat.

It is a crossbreed of a Carolina Reaper and what Mr Currie mysteriously classifies as a “pepper that a friend of mine sent me from Michigan that was brutally hot”.

“I was feeling the heat for three and a half hours. Then the cramps came,” said Mr Currie, one of only five people so far to eat an entire Pepper X.

“Those cramps are horrible. I was laid out flat on a marble wall for approximately an hour in the rain, groaning in pain.”

Pepper X has been in the works since Mr Currie last set the hottest chilli record in 2013 with the Carolina Reaper, a bright red, knobbly fruit with what aficionados call a scorpion tail.

In contrast, Pepper X is greenish-yellow, does not have the same shelf appeal and carries an earthy flavour once its heat is delivered.

A chemical in peppers called capsaicin is what causes the burning sensation when eating one.

Heat in peppers is measured in Scoville heat units – a scale based on the concentration of capsaicin.

Zero is bland and a regular jalapeno pepper registers about 5,000 units.

A habanero, the record-holder about 25 years ago, typically tops 100,000, and the Guinness Book of World Records lists the Carolina Reaper at 1.64 million units.

Pepper X’s record is an average of 2.69 million units.

Its sizzling Scoville score was calculated by Winthrop University in South Carolina, which conducted tests using specimens from the past four years.

1. Pepper X: 2.69 million units

2. Carolina Reaper: 1.64 million units

3. Trinidad Scorpion Butch T: 1.46 million units

4. Naga Viper: 1.38 million units

5. Trinidad Moruga scorpion: 1.2 million units

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Mr Currie, founder of the Puckerbutt Pepper Company in Fort Mill, South Carolina, revealed Pepper X during an episode of the popular YouTube show, Hot Ones.

He is already working on his next potential record-breaker.

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