A Carolina Reaper is so hot that your eyes will roll to the back of your head. The Scoville heat units for Carolina Reapers range from 1,400,000 to 2,200,000, which is very hot. This part at the top is as hot or hotter than regular pepper spray. And it’s silly to compare it to a jalapeno. Even the hottest jalapeno is about 175 times weaker than the Carolina Reaper’s mildest pepper. It is about 200,000 SHU hotter than the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion on average. To give you an idea, 200,000 SHU is about how hot a typical habanero pepper is, so it’s a significant increase to something that was already very hot.
In November 2013, the Guinness Book of World Records named the Carolina Reaper the new champion of super-hot peppers, putting the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion in second place. Many peppers want to take the Reaper’s place as the hottest pepper. Some have heat levels at or above 3,000,000 Scoville heat units (Pepper X and Apollo pepper.) The Reaper is still the hottest pepper, but one of these chillies could take the title soon.
Source: google.com
What Are Carolina Reaper Peppers?
The Carolina Reaper is the hottest pepper in the world at the moment. How hot? With a range of 1.4 million to 2.2 million Scoville heat units, the Reaper is hotter than many self-defence pepper sprays and more prominent than many other super-hot chillies. That’s madness you can eat. But behind this extreme heat is a surprising sweetness that makes hot sauces and other spicy foods taste even better.
Pod Shape
The “scorpion’s tail,” which is very clear in this pepper, is a feature that only a few of the hottest peppers have. The width of the fruit ranges from 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 cm), and the length from 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7.6 cm).
Some pepper pods have bumps all over them. Some pods have smoother skin. The infamous stinger is not on every fruit but should be on most pods. The original colour is red, but now chocolate, yellow, and even peach are natural colours.
What Does This Chilli Taste And Look Like?
The Carolina Reaper has a tail like a scorpion, just like the Naja Viper and the Trinidad Scorpion. It is a red pepper that is between 1.5 and 2 inches long.
This is the sweetest super-hot pepper you’ll find when it comes to taste. This is how they are grown by the Puckerbutt Pepper Company, creator of the world’s hottest sauces. They want their peppers to make people’s taste buds work and make food taste better. The Carolina Reaper has a lot more flavour than most peppers, which are very hot. If you’re used to hot foods, their sauces are pretty tasty.
Where Did The Carolina Reaper Originate?
This very hot chilli is grown by Ed Currie. His South Carolina-based PuckerButt Pepper Company made the Reaper by crossing a red habanero strain with a Naja Viper pepper, which was once the hottest pepper in the world. He wanted to make a sweet pepper with a little more kick. What he got broke all records. Notably, Smokin’ Ed and PuckerButt also grew the Pepper X and Apollo peppers, which are the Reaper’s most famous rivals for the throne.
Ed Currie’s career as a pepper farmer has a fantastic story behind it. He started growing peppers because he was interested in how healthy they were and how they could help fight diseases. His family had a history of cancer, so he started looking into places with low disease rates to try to avoid it as much as possible. He noticed that these groups all ate a lot of hot peppers, which they had in common. This started a passion that led to something pretty special, and Ed has often given his chilli pepper to cancer research.
Uses of Carolina Reaper
The Carolina Reaper pepper can be used in almost any dish, such as:
- DIY Reaper Hot Sauce
- Fresh in every meal
- Frozen for long-term storage
- Dehydrated to make pepper powders or flakes
- Canned
- Pepper Jellies
- Dry rubs for jerky or BBQ
- Seasonings that have already been made
Where Can The Carolina Reaper Pepper Be Bought?
This is not a pepper you will often find at the nearby store. If you want something fresh, you should go to a speciality store or a chilli farm. Or, if you’d rather, you can buy Carolina Reaper hot sauces, seeds, and other things online from places like Amazon or sites that focus on gardening.
Don’t go straight to the Carolina Reaper if you can handle jalapenos or cayenne peppers. They don’t have the same SHU. The pepper scale takes you on a trip. You must work up to reach and enjoy the Carolina Reaper heights. It’s not a pepper for everyone, but welcome home to those who like it as hot as the sun.
Conclusion
A fruit with this much capsaicin, the natural compound that gives hot peppers their spicy kick, can have some nasty side effects.
Even if you don’t touch a Carolina Reaper, you might be affected by how hot it is. People, especially those sensitive to capsaicin, can get watery eyes or sneeze from smelling the pepper.
Most of the time, it’s best to wear gloves when handling one. Also, capsaicin comes out when you cut it, so be careful. Even so, once the pepper is taken care of, it can be used – with caution! – in several recipes, primarily for hot sauces, but it has also been used in small amounts in stir fries and soup, and for the brave, Carolina Reaper chips have been made.
FAQs
What’s hotter than a Carolina Reaper pepper?
Guinness still ranks the Carolina Reaper as the hottest chilli in the world, but a Dragon’s Breath pepper recently tested at 2,483,584 SHU.
Is a Carolina Reaper safe to eat?
Yes, it is safe to eat scorching peppers. A man in a pepper-eating contest was said to have gotten a “Thunderclap Headache.” This is rare, and we don’t know the man’s health problems. Eating hot peppers is good for your health in many ways.
People who don’t eat spicy foods often or who already have health problems like IBS can get an upset stomach from eating super-hot peppers.
Does nature make the Carolina Reaper?
It depends. This pepper is not a landrace, meaning it was found in a remote part of the world. Instead, it is a crossbreed. It would have taken thousands of millions of years to happen without people.
