Top 5 Hottest Chillies In The World

Life

oi-Anwesha

By Anwesha Barari

Thursday, March 1, 2012, 17:33

Who would want to get their tongues burned by tasting the hottest chillies in the world? I mean it is one thing to like spicy food and quite another to taste each one and determine which is hotter. But as they say, 'Some like it Hot!' Now the next question arises, how hot a chilli is cannot be left on an individual's choice, there has to be some standard system for it?

There is and it is called the Scoville scale . In this scale the basic units are called Scoville heat units or SHU for short. Like Naga Jokia has 1,500,000. SHU basically measures the capsiacin in the chillies. Capsiacin is the chemical that is responsible for stimulating the hotness detecting taste buds on your tongue. Here are some of the declared hottest chillies in the world.

Top 5 Hottest Chillies In The World:

1. Naga Jokia: Of yes you have guessed it right, it comes from the land of spices, India. This particular variety of chillies also called the ghost pepper, is a small red and crinkled chilli but do not go by the size, it sure packs a punch with the SHU of 855,000 to 1,041,427. It contains the purest form of capsiacin

2. Red Savina: There are various other cousins of the Naga with all the derivatives names beginning with Naga but when we move to the next category of the hottest chillies in the world, then it has to this one. Small, red, crinkled and also was supposed to be the hottest pepper in the world at SHU of 350,000 to 577,000 until the Ghost pepper came along.

3. Scotch Bonnet Pepper: This one is more like a full bodied capsicum but do not mistake it with a normal capsicum, it can totally numb your taste buds for a few seconds. With a SHU of 250,000, it is essentially Caribbean by origin and most frequently found in their dishes.

4. Pequin Pepper: This tiny flower bud like chilli is also called by different names like Bird pepper. This name probably comes from the fact that it is pecked and eaten by some birds. When you see it, looks like a rounded flower bud but bite into it and it has no resemblance to sweet smelling flowers. It stands at 100,000-140,000 SHU and comes from the Great basin of Mexico.

5. Guntur Chilli: The hottest chillies in the world come from the hottest state in India, Andhra Pradesh. If not in terms of temperature but in terms of cuisine, Andhra is the hottest. Guntur is a small district that produces a dozen varieties of this chilli all in between 30,000–50,000, very edible compared to the others you would say.

These were the hottest chilli peppers that grow in the world. Each has at least a dozen closely related cousins but we have only picked the exclusive.