By Pete Legrady
Part 1 of 3:
There has been some debate here in the store regarding which pepper is actually the hottest- I thought I'd clear up some misconceptions and hopefully have a little fun sharing this information with you.
In 2007 the Guinness Book of World Records tested and classified the Bhut Jolokia pepper as the hottest pepper on earth. The Jolokia pepper was rated at 1,041,300 scoville units - give or take 5% margin of error based on the accuracy of the High Performance Liquid Chromatography testing. With peppers of this concentration of capsaicin, random variables can and do occur so an absolute value is almost impossible to attain.
Some of you are thinking there are newer peppers that are hotter and you are right, but they have not been certified by the GBWR - read on though, we'll get to these later. I'm not certain that the environments of other planets can support the cultivation of peppers so the Bhut Jolokia is quite possibly the hottest pepper in the universe.
The different names of the pepper probably lead to the confusion as to which pepper is the hottest. As the nations of the world have different languages, we each have different names for the pepper. The Bhut Jolokia Pepper, Bhot Jolokia Pepper, Naga Jolokia Pepper, Jolokia Pepper, Ghost Pepper, Ghost Chili Pepper, and Ghost Chili are all different names for the same pepper.
Some people believe the pepper originates from the foothills of Bhutan; hence, the Bhut Jolokia Pepper.
Bhutan is a landlocked territory located between the Republic of India and the People's Republic of China. In the 1960's the Royal Government of Bhutan began an economic development plan. Previously, you could only get to the country by foot. Treks through Tibet or through the plains of Assam and West Bengal only got you half way there. An arduous climb through Himalayan Mountains concluded the trip. The inaccessibility of Bhutan was the reason the Bhut Jolokia Pepper remained hidden from Western cuisine.
As Bhutan's economic development plan progressed accessibility became much easier. Roads and airports were built to assist the traveler interested in visiting a country that was extremely remote and relatively untouched by modern civilizations and their conveniences.
The rulers of Bhutan still fiercely guard their ancient Buddhist traditions. Tourism is limited to roughly 30,000 people per annum. Similar to the spice trade of the 1400's between Africa and China, the pepper became available to the chili heads of Western Cultures in the early years of the 21st century.
When the pepper made it to America our media made a slight distortion of the name and changed it from "Bhut" to "Bhot". Whether this colloquialism was a typographical error cannot be proven but the definition of Bhot seems to make it clear that was not a typo. The Americanized version Bhot translates to Ghost in this region's language; hence, the Ghost Pepper. We also dropped the Bhut and Bhot from the proper name and simply called it the Jolokia pepper.
Part 2 in the next newsletter!
