Ghost peppers are supposed to be the hottest peppers in the world. There a sauces flavored with them at this local shop. They are locked away and you have to sign a waiver to buy them. :eek:
Has anyone tried a dish flavored with the ghost pepper or its extract? How did you react? I’ve seen videos on youtube of grown adults collapsing onto the floor in fetal position after trying them.
I’ve heard that those waivers are actually purely a marketing tactic.
They do take your breath away. But it’s an intense endorphin rush.
The waiver may be, but until 2012 it was certified as the hottest pepper, 400 times hotter than tabasco (App 1 million scoville compared to tobasco’s 2500)
A friend of mine received a jar of ghost pepper as a gift.
I put my finger on the inside of the lid. You really couldn’t even tell I had any residue on my finger. I licked my finger, and my mouth got really hot. What was weird was that the heat then went down my throat. The hottest jalapeno never even did that.
I keep a jar of Bhut Jolokia Mega Death Devil’s Chilli Paste around. It is awesomely hot. A little mixed into mayo with lime zest or added to yogurt for dressing goes a very long way.
Oh please, the ghost pepper is so last year. The new record holder is the Trindad Scorpion Butch T at roughly 1.46 million scoville units. Here’s a cool article from the New Yorker about the people trying to grow the hottest peppers.
I’ve grown both them and the Trinidad Scorpion. Note that growing conditions and just the inherent variability of peppers will produce various heat levels and may not be close to the world record numbers the hottest varieties of each have produced.
That out of the way, they’re freaking hot. They both remind me a bit of habaneros, but with a more concentrated, intense, and chemically sizzle to them. I love habaneros, but I have to say, I’m not really much a fan of either the bhut jolokia or Trinidad scorpion. They just seem a bit bitter and acrid to me, and although they have some of the fruitiness of a capsicum chinense (those “habanero-type” peppers), the end result to me is chemically. Of the two, I did like the ghost pepper a bit better. The scorps are quite pretty, though.
The trinidad scorpions I grew come with an amusing anecdote. I had been nursing the damned things, growing them from seed, and was so excited when one summer morning I went out into the backyward and finally saw one of the peppers had ripened. I just needed to have a taste right then and there, on an empty stomach. So I pick one off the plant. It’s a tiny pepper, maybe the size of a dime or so. I carefully bite the tip. I wait. I only notice a mild warmth. I carefully take another bite. Hot, I feel something around habanero level, but nothing unbearable. So I just eat the rest. Ah…ok…now I feel a good bit of sharp, intense heat, but nothing a habanero eater is not used to. It’s just that for about half the size the Scorpion packed as much or just a little more punch than a standard habanero.
Then I feel the pepper making its way down my esophagus and drawing a line of heat from my throat to my empty stomach. My stomach is not happy and begins to cramp a little. I drive my wife to the subway and remark that perhaps what I had done was not such a good idea. About a half hour later, my stomach is upset, so I eat some bread and drink some milk, and all is good.
Another half or or so later, my stomach acts up again and feels like it’s full of angry fire ants. There is this concentrated feeling of pain and warmth emanating from my stomach. I run upstairs to bed and lie down. The pain got so bad that I couldn’t even use the laptop to distract me. All I could do is lie on my back, eyes closed, listening to NPR, and wondering whether a trip to the ER was in order. Maybe this was some sort of violent allergic reaction? I get a little light headed and nauseated. I realize that I need to vomit and begin to wonder whether that’s a good idea or whether it’s just going to be fire all the way back up. Eventually, I can’t hold it in anymore, so I run to the toilet and vomit. Thankfully, it wasn’t bad coming back up. I lay my belly on the tile floor to cool it off. After about five minutes, I find the energy to get back up and haul myself back into bed. This time, the fire ant feeling comes back, and I begin to worry, but it subsides after about a half hour. Lesson learned. No ultrahots on a an empty stomach from now on.
This is the only time I’ve ever vomited from eating a hot pepper, and no other pepper has given me this reaction. That said, I blame it on eating it plain on an empty stomach, as I’ve had the Scorpion peppers many times since without incident or any of the same sensations. I just find their flavor (or at least the ones I grew) to be insipid and chemically.
I had a bottle of sauce that has since been used up. My brother in law keeps a little baggie of the powdered pepper. I accidentally got a speck in my eye once. That was uncomfortable.
I’m not a huge fan, as I don’t like capsaicin to be the only focus of my food. With this stuff it kind of crowds out any other tastes.
Well, I’m sold!
I actually just got some (dried) but haven’t had a chance to experiment. I’m a scared :eek:
We used to grow habaneros in our garden and they do ‘can’ quite well.
After a couple of years, the fire diminishes to the point where you can actually taste the wonderful habanero flavor. I wonder if these new breeds taste as good when they are ‘canned’.
Just to be accurate, we didn’t actually can the peppers, we ‘jarred’ them using mason jars.
Weird how that verb has persisted when I know very few folks who actually can their vegetables.
Interesting. I like the heat, but the flavor of the habanero pepper itself I really don’t find pleasant at all. I prefer bird’s eye or pequin peppers; not quite as hot, but have a much better flavor, to me.
Like I said, I think the problem is mostly the empty stomach. The mouth burn wasn’t that much worse than a habanero, just more concentrated. I had no problems handling the heat in the mouth and the throat–it was my stomach that did me in. Stay away from eating on an empty stomach, and you should be fine if you’re experienced with habaneros and ultra hots. Also, if you’ve played around with those stupid hot extract sauces, like Wanza’s Wicked, then you have a good idea of what to expect. It’s not quite *that[/] chemically, but in terms of bite, that’s what we’re talking about.
I just find them two very different flavors. The bird’s eye peppers and pequins have that classic “red chile pepper” taste to them, while habaneros have a more citrusy, fruity taste that they share with all member of capsicum chinense. There’s some cuisines I can substitute one for the other, but others where it just throws the whole flavor profile off. Like jerk chicken made with Thai chiles instead of Scotch bonnets tastes wrong to me. Similarly, a Thai dish made with habaneros instead of Thai chiles just doesn’t taste right.
I’ve had ghost pepper salsa and ghost pepper vinegar-based hot sauce. Quite fiery and tasty. Have some dried ghost peppers in a bag that I’ve used cooked into various foods but have not just picked one up and bitten into it and attempted to eat the whole pepper by itself or anything, if that’s what you mean.
I diced a bunch of Scotch Bonnets once without gloves and the burning between my fingers was more panic inducing than what I’d imagine an acid freakout is like.
Hell, I’ve done that and then took a pee…I think the outcome was similar to frying bacon while naked.
Salsa Verde…hmmm…
A local burger joint used to have a ghost pepper burger on the menu. Last time in I noticed that it was gone. When I asked why, they said that it was too much trouble to have to thoroughly clean the grill after making one, before resuming regular business. Also, the capsaicin that went airborne was causing employees in the kitchen area some respiratory problems. I’ve never tried them and have no desire to do so.