Maggie Follett
THESE days, chillies aren’t just hotter, they’re way more hip and happening than ever before.
Over the past decade or so – fuelled by an international quest to create increasingly palate-searing strains – feistier members of the extensive Capsicum pepper tribe have become big business.
It’s not so much about the taste (although aficionados detect as many subtle nuances as wine-bores do), or that chillies are good for you (the hotter, the better, with remarkable health benefits), but rather the sheer machismo attached to surviving a mouth-blistering gastronomic onslaught, with dignity intact.
The stuff that gives chillies their zing – and, more vulgarly, their notorious “ring-sting” – is the active ingredient, capsaicin: a colourless, flavourless, compound, found mainly in the pithy tissue containing the seeds, and, to a lesser extent, the flesh.
Capsaicin is a powerful irritant, so contact with sensitive mucous membranes makes the body despatch a poison-alert to pain receptors in the brain, resulting in the feel-good endorphin rush to which die-hard “chilli-heads” (that’s what latter-day devotees call themselves) give such glowing testimony.
Chillies are an essential component of spicy foods, and traditionally more timid Western taste buds continue to warm to this once-exotic condiment.
Developing, cultivating and selling ever-hotter chilli strains has evolved into a competitive industry.
The big issue is a pepper’s SHU-wow factor, and contemporary capsaicin junkies get their jollies by beating the heat. For the uninitiated, “SHU” is Scoville Heat Units, named after pioneering Parke-Davis chemist, Wilbur Scoville, who established the rating scale in 1912, based on the number of units of sugar water required to dilute a unit of pureed pepper to the point at which it’s no longer hot. For example, at a million SHU, pure capsaicin (used in pepper spray) must be diluted with 16 million parts of sugar water to get the all-clear, whereas an innocuous (yawn) jalapeno pepper scores a paltry rating of roughly 3 000 SHU, for its piquancy to be undetectable. (Tasting panels have since been replaced by the more accurate High Pressure Liquid Chromatography.)
As a result of today’s burgeoning “go for the burn” braggadocio, the formerly fearsome habanero (bah, humbug) has been relegated to a lowly rank, according to pepper-pecking order. Though clocking in at about 350 000 SHU, it’s almost too wimpish to warrant a mention.
To be considered a real player, you have to join what chilli-head jargon refers to as the “superhots” league, that is a rating of about a million SHUs. (More than 1.5 million is dubbed “nuclear”.) But first, to appreciate the scalding heights to which self-respecting peppers must soar, a little history: From 1994 to 2006, a mutant of the familiar, orange “Scotch Bonnet” habanero – the blazing, 557 000 SHU-rated Red Savina habanero (developed in the US by Frank Garcia of GNS Spices, and afforded governmental protection under the Plant Variety Protection Act) reigned undisputed as the world’s hottest chilli, according to the Guinness World Records.
The Red Savina was unexpectedly dethroned in 2007 by the scorching, double-strength Naga (Bhut) Jolokia or “Indian Ghost Pepper”. At a terrifying 1 million SHU, this Assamese hybrid pepper used by the Indian army as an anti-terrorism device) is 400 times hotter than Tabasco.
For four years, the Pride of India’s title was unrivalled. Then in 2011, a surprise challenger from the UK appeared, in the form of the blistering Infinity Pepper (1 067 286 SHU), created by Nick Woods of Fire Foods. This was displaced two weeks later, by another English entry: the “paint-stripping” Naga Viper. Developed by Gerald Fowler of The Chilli Pepper Company, the contentious Viper held top slot for two months at 1 382 118 SHU, before being discredited as an unstable hybrid .
A month later, enterprising Aussie, Marcel de Wit of The Chilli Factory muscled in on the fiery Brit-pop act with his lethal Trinidad Scorpion Butch T, scooping the 2011 Guinness World Record with an eye-watering 1 463 700 SHU.
This was superseded, in 2012, by the Moruga Scorpion from Trinidad, registered with a hot-as-Hades Scoville rating more than 2 million, by the New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute. (“O death, where is thy sting?”)
The Moruga’s ranking seemed secure until December last year. Enter South Carolina chilli grower, Smokin’ Ed Currie, from the aptly-named PuckerButt Pepper Company. His Carolina Reaper delivers a sizzling, sinus-drizzling average of 1 569 300 SHU, peaking at about 2 200 000, confirmed by Guinness World Records. (“Dr Evil-in-a-pod”!)
The Reaper remains untrounced, but rigorous tests are continuously being conducted, to identify other likely contenders. One thing is certain – SHUs are on the up – while growers vie to provide a market clamouring for gustatory hellfire with seeds, and diverse other food-additive products.
Featured in the “don’t-go-there” zone are novelty collectors’ items, such as tiny vials of capsaicin crystal. Listed as a harmful substance, pure capsaicin has been banned in the UK, due to pranksters sneaking it into salt cellars at restaurants, or slipping it into unsuspecting patrons’ vodka shots.
Capsaicin cowboys have even snorted it, to which a trawl of the web will attest. You’ll also see footage of pro and amateur chilli-challengers consuming the world’s most explosive peppers, often with hilariously devastating results. (Hot tip: Water doesn’t douse the flames. Capsaicin is soluble only in fat (milk) and alcohol (beer).) Celebrity “chilli stunt-folk”, with handles such as Hot Juan, Darth Naga, Chilli Dave and Ted the Fire-Breathing Idiot boast a cult following.
SA is rapidly cottoning on to the craze, so be warned. If you’re not inclined to walk fearlessly into mouth-Mordor, and you can’t rock ’n’ roll with the punches of a Viper, a Scorpion or a Reaper… it’s time to tiptoe out the kitchen!
Two Cape suppliers are keeping the home fires burning. Based in Somerset West, Mr Chilli has been growing and supplying hot peppers since 2008, hand-harvesting seeds from a 1st generation home-grown plants. In Big Bay, Seeds for Africa (founded in 2011) offers imported and locally-cultivated chilli seeds; particularly rarer, heirloom varieties.
l See www.mrchilli.co.za or www.SeedsforAfrica.co.za