The Carolina Reaper

The Carolina Reaper, now famously known as the world’s hottest chili pepper, averages 1,569,300 SHU on the Scoville Scale with levels that even peak over 2,200,000 SHU. In other words, it’s a pepper that’s a 100 times hotter than a Jalapeno. The Carolina Reaper, which is a hybrid chili pepper, is apart of the Capsicum chinense species; having originally been called “HP22B” by it’s creator Ed Currie, owner and runner of the PuckerButt Pepper Company which is located in Fort Mill, South Carolina. It has a number of culinary uses with sauces, seeds, and peppers being fairly easy to come by.

The Hottest Pepper In the World

The Carolina Reaper was deemed as the world’s hottest chili pepper in 2012 by the Guinness World Records, surpassing the previous record holder; the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion. Ed Currie paid $12,000 in order to obtain the information he needed to supply Guinness with to claim the record. The proof came from tests conducted at Winthrop’s lab which tested how hot the pepper is. This year alone, Currie will harvest around 17 million Carolina Reaper peppers right on his own land in South Carolina and could stand to make as much as $1 million from selling the pepper seeds and making paste out of the peppers that he then sells to hot sauce companies.

“I pretty much work on peppers all the time, when I look at my children, I see peppers.” Currie has stated. Since the growth of his business, he has trademarked his brand “Smoking Ed’s Carolina Reaper.” which gives him the sole right to phrase that on his sales of peppers and seeds. Currie’s Carolina Reaper chili pepper has even showed to have similar chemical composition to pepper spray.

Culinary Uses

While that may not sound like something people would want to put anywhere near their mouths, taste buds apparently can’t get enough as the super hot pepper business continues to get even hotter; which has now become one of America’s fastest=growing industries. Spicy food is also appearing almost 15% more on menus from 2010. As for Sriracha hot chili sauce, the brand sold over 20 million bottles just last year. Ketchup is also getting hotter with the release of Heinz’s Hot & Spicy Ketchup. Red Robin has even introduced a new line of sandwiches and burgers dressed with habanero sauce, called island fire, in addition to their burger that features a scorching ghost pepper sauce. And now, in 2013, a majority of Americans are saying they prefer hot or spicy foods.

Sourced from Pepperheads for life 3/14/2016

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