As much as I like hot, this may be a bit much for me. Years ago I had a neighbor from Trinidad (or was it Tobago?) who used to bring back liters of hot chili relish made from scotch bonnet peppers. He would slather it on to his sandwiches and pretty much everything else. It was good but quite hot. These days I visit a Cambodian restaurant that makes a pretty good bird's eye chili condiment that can be added to the food. I love it and use what I think is a lot but the Cambodian guests really pile it on.
How hot is too hot?
Yes, the Naga Viper, the latest claimant to the world's-hottest-pepper crown, outdistances its predecessor, the Bhut Jolokia, or "ghost chili," by more than 300,000 points on the famous Scoville scale of tongue-scorching chili hotness. Researchers at Warwick University testing the Naga Viper found that it measures 1,359,000 on the Scoville scale, which rates heat by tracking the presence of a chemical compound. In comparison, most varieties of jalapeño peppers measure in the 2,500 to 5,000 range -- milder than the Naga Viper by a factor of 270.
You might think the Naga Viper would hail from some part of the world with a strong demand for spicy food, such as India or Mexico. But the new pepper is actually the handiwork of Gerald Fowler, a British chili farmer and pub owner, who crossed three of the hottest peppers known to man -- including the Bhut Jolokia -- to create his Frankenstein-monster chili.
"It's painful to eat," Fowler told the Daily Mail. "It's hot enough to strip paint." Indeed, the Daily Mail reports that defense researchers are already investigating the pepper's potential uses as a weapon.
