Latest news with #PepperX
Business Insider
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
I invented the world's hottest pepper twice, in a top-secret location where my pickers carry firearms
I'm always working on new pepper breeds and have one even hotter than Pepper X. I'm not chasing records, though. I enjoy the challenge of making a hot pepper that tastes good. I closely guard my pepper creations. Some fields where I grow are kept at top-secret locations. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with pepper farmer and founder of PuckerButt Pepper Company, Ed Currie. Currie created the Carolina Reaper, which first broke the Guinness World Record for hottest pepper in 2013 and held that title until 2023, when another of Ed's creations, Pepper X, took the new title. It has been edited for length and clarity. We grow peppers across many secret farms in South Carolina. It takes eight to 10 years to create a new pepper, and there are always new pepper breeds I'm working on. People think I'm chasing records. I'm not. I like the challenge of making a pepper hot that also tastes good. Needless to say, we keep security tight around here. All of us are armed, including the pickers. A while back, one guy claimed to have stolen some Pepper X, but he was standing in the middle of a jalapeño and habanero field. So we knew it wasn't Pepper X. He got in a lot of trouble, though. Since then, we haven't had issues with thieves but there are other threats like coyotes and copperheads. We've got to be prepared. I don't know if you've ever seen a coyote, but they don't like humans too much. To anyone who wants to steal my hottest peppers, I say, you'll never find them. Those fields are kept top secret. Please help BI improve our Business, Tech, and Innovation coverage by sharing a bit about your role — it will help us tailor content that matters most to people like you. Continue By providing this information, you agree that Business Insider may use this data to improve your site experience and for targeted advertising. By continuing you agree that you accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . How we grow the hottest peppers in the world We're in a subtropical zone with ideal conditions: great soil, long growing seasons, and regular rain. I breed peppers with various techniques, one is crossbreeding with simple paintbrushes. I take a flower from one plant, brush it with the paintbrush to collect its pollen, and then transfer that pollen to another flower on another plant. Then I remove all the other flowers I haven't cross-pollinated, so only the cross gets to fruit. Maybe out of say 200 plants, you might get 20 that produce a fruit that is viable for you to go on with. And then what might reach maturity is maybe 10 of those. We don't use synthetic chemicals, our pest control strategy is bugs. I buy ladybugs, green lacewings, and praying mantises every year and release them in the field. They do a better job than any chemical. The real pests are deer who eat the pepper plants. One year, we lost over 30,000 plants in a weekend to a herd of deer. We now build fences around our crops, which helps keep them out. Hurricanes can also be an issue. One field had eight feet of water over it after a hurricane. We lost the majority of our crop in that field, but still had a lot more plants to replenish it. This isn't just a business for me I was a drunk and a drug addict until 1999. So really, for over a decade, my life was just finding how to make more money to do more drinking and more drugging. I'm in recovery from addiction, and I truly believe peppers helped save me and stay clean. Hot peppers can release endorphins and dopamine in the body, so it kind of takes the edge off that craving. In fact, we're working with doctors to explore peppers in opiate detox. A tummy ache is better than a methadone dependency. I start every day with pepper oil in my coffee. Then, I'll head to my pepper farms and taste peppers there all day. It's a regular part of my diet. We already have a new pepper that has enough data to beat Pepper X, but I want three more years of data before releasing it. I don't want any controversy when it comes out. We also have one that's coming in hotter than that, and we just started the data on that one, so it's going to be five to seven more years before we release that one. Going hotter isn't just about the heat, it's about economies of scale. We only sell about 2% of our peppers whole; the rest we turn into mash, powder, or sauce that can be added to hot sauce recipes. So, if you're using 55 gallons of habanero mash to heat something up, I can do the same with five gallons of Carolina reaper, or one gallon of Pepper X. So I get more bang for my buck. This story was adapted from Ed Currie's interview for Business Insider's series " Big Business." Learn more about Currie and the hot pepper businesses in the video below:
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists discover why some hot peppers are total wild cards
Hot peppers aren't for everyone, but that's where the Scoville scale comes in handy. The scale is named after American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville, who developed the pepper spiciness test in 1912. To determine a rating, an exact amount of dried pepper is dissolved in alcohol to extract its capsaicinoids, the group of compounds responsible for all that heat. This solution is then diluted with sugar water and assessed by a trained panel of specialists. To get a sense of the spectrum, bell peppers rank around a 0 on Scoville Heat Units (SHUs), while notorious hybrids like the Carolina reaper measure as much as 2,500,000 SHUs. But even the Carolina reaper pales in comparison to Pepper X, the Guinness World Record holder for hottest hot pepper, ranking in at a bear spray-like 2,693,000 SHUs. As you may have already worried, even a trained human taste tester can offer subjective assessments, making the Scoville scale more of an approximation than a science. Sometimes a highly rated pepper feels like a dud, or what should be a moderate jalapeno results in gulping down multiple glasses of milk. But even modern methodologies based on high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) can rate peppers in ways that confound a sweating hot sauce enthusiast. If the capsaicinoids—particularly capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin—are tallied accurately, then why the varying perceived heat levels? That's what a team of researchers recently set out to determine. Their conclusions, published in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, identifies a trio of separate compounds that can essentially function as an 'anti-spice' weapon. And the ramifications go far beyond the palette. To get to the bottom of the spice mystery, experts at The Ohio State University collected powdered samples from 10 pepper varieties including serrano, Scotch bonnet, and Chile de árbol. They then measured each fruit's capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin levels using a process known as liquid chromatography mass spectrometry. A trained group of taste testers next tried each pepper powder after mixing them into tomato juice. Don't worry—no volunteers were harmed during the experiment. Instead, the concoctions featured just enough of each respective powder to bring the heat up to 800 SHU. That's around the spice of a Cuban pepper, but less than a poblano. While each sample contained the same levels of capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin, participants reported a significantly wide range of perceived heat across the 10 peppers. Their hot takes (sorry) implied more than just the capsaicinoids were at play. Researchers then ran multiple more chemical composition analyses including nuclear magnetic resonance imaging to ultimately pinpoint another five naturally occurring compounds suspected of influencing each pepper's perceived spice level. The team next asked another group of taste testers to judge whether those compounds altered capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin pungency, either on their own or in combination with one another. Scientists ultimately determined that while three of those compounds—capsianoside I, roseoside, and gingerglycolipid A—reduced intensity, they didn't do so in combination with one another. Notably, none of them also offered a discernible flavor when mixed into water. According to study corresponding author Devin Peterson, these newly identified compounds can serve as key additives to fine-tune everyday cuisine. 'These advancements could enable the customization of desirable spicy flavor profiles or lead to the creation of a household ingredient designed to tone down excessive heat in dishes—the anti-spice,' Peterson said in an accompanying statement. The possibilities extend far beyond the kitchen. Aside from food customization, pharmaceutical designers may soon turn to capsianoside I, roseoside, and gingerglycolipid A while creating new medications and treatments. Peterson suggests 'significant medical potential' could come by leveraging these compounds' ability to reduce perceived discomfort into novel non-opioid analgesic agents for managing pain In the meantime, the new study serves as a good reminder to always take Scoville levels with a grain of salt—not that sodium would help ease unintended pepper pains, of course.
