Pepper Master Ed Currie Tastes 10 Of The Hottest Peppers in the World

[Ed bites into pepper]

[funky music begins]

[rhythmic clapping continues under music]

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我Smokin' Ed Currie.

我a professional pepper breeder

and hot sauce maker by trade

and I'm here to rank my favorite peppers from mild to wild.

我going to be ranking these peppers

on two things today: flavor complexity and heat.

我ready to get into some peppers.

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Jalapeno.

Jalapenos are either green or red.

Red jalapenos are the ripe version of this fruit.

There is no way to tell from the skin whether a jalapeno

is hot or not.

Inside, it's got a very, very thick flesh on it.

This red part is the flesh

and then the pith is this white part.

A lot of people take the pith and the seed out

but seeds have no heat.

They just give texture to your sauces.

This pith is really where the heat is.

These are called ribs.

You can see the main part of the pith

and then there's a little cavity underneath.

These ribs have some of the best flavor that's in a pepper.

[knife hits cutting board]

[Ed crunches pepper]

It's a very flavorful pepper.

You get a sugar sweetness up front when you bite into it

and then you get that floral taste towards the end of it.

We use it a lot when we want some sauce

to be on the sweeter side.

I would say that this pepper is in the high 5,000s,

maybe even six to 7,000 on Scoville Heat Units.

This jalapeno is right up here.

Out of the peppers that I've brought,

this one is the most flavorful with the mildest heat.

[music continues]

Orange scorpion.

I love the color and the texture of this pepper.

It has all these ridges and bumps in it.

That means that there's more area

for the pith inside to grow.

Scorpion peppers are very thin walled.

The flesh is very thin.

The pith is very thin, but they pack a lot of heat.

This orange one is really vibrant to me.

You can smell it immediately.

It's a very pungent pepper.

That pith wall that I was talking about

it's really pronounced, but there's deep, deep pockets

and if you look in these pockets

that yellow stuff is capsaicin.

[bubble pops]

That's really, really, really hot.

That is a chemical compound

that our brain perceives as heat.

Capsaicin is kind of akin to a poison to us,

so the reaction is telling us, Hey, don't eat this.

It's the plant's way of protecting itself.

It releases huge amounts of endorphin and dopamine

into your system so you actually get kind of a rush

while you're eating food with it.

That produces

[bubbles popping]

a lot of physiological effects.

That's going to happen to everybody.

The hotter the pepper gets,

usually the less the seed production in it.

Just a little teeny taste and you can see those oils

on my fingers.

[Crew Member] Do you want gloves?

No.

Gloves are for you guys, not for me.

[bubble pops]

When I taste this pepper,

the heat comes on almost immediately.

Scorpions are more on the bitter side,

but they have that floral note to them

that really can bring out other flavors

when you mix it in a hot sauce.

Scorpions go between say 700,000 Scoville Heat Units

and up to the highest one we've ever seen measured

is 1.4 Million Scoville Heat Units.

我placing this pepper on the spicy side.

It's one of the hotter peppers there is.

[music continues]

Carolina Reaper.

This is the granddaddy of all the peppers.

This is Smokin' Ed's Carolina Reaper,

the hottest pepper in the world.

The Guinness World record right now at a low average

of 1.642 million Scoville Heat Units,

compared to the jalapeno we started with,

it's like a roller skates to the space shuttle.

What motivated me to develop this breed

was I was looking to raise a certain capsaicinoid

in peppers that I truly believe

can cause a cancer cell to start an autoimmune sequence.

Also, I wanted it to be sweeter with simple sugars

by accident I was given the hottest pepper in the world.

It's a very scary looking pepper.

It's full of ridges and bumps and spikes

and it's got a little tail on it and it just looks mean.

That's a good indicator

that this is going to be a seriously hot pepper.

When we open this one up

you'll notice the pith is really high up on the pepper.

It's got a very high seed pocket.

The ribs are really, really wide.

Again, more capsaicin producing material.

It smells so floral, it's unbelievable.

The sweetness, you can almost taste it in your tongue

but I know this pepper is going to be hot,

so I'm just going to take a little slice.

I don't recommend anybody eat more than that much.

[tense string music begins]

If you don't chew it, it's going to get stuck in your throat

or it's going to give you a belly ache.

You must chew the pepper up when you're eating it straight.

You get this amazing sugar sensation

and then that floral tone blossoms

突然间的热量只是砰!

Punches you right in the face.

我having trouble talking because the saliva

has just gone

[Ed makes eruption noise with mouth]

in my mouth.

我starting to cry, okay, just from a little bit of pepper.

I can feel my skin changing color.

The hair is going up on my arms.

All this is happening because I like it, okay?

At the risk of being the proud papa of this pepper,

我still going to put it all the way up here.

Flavor is amazing.

The heat is stupid.

[funky melody continues]

Peach ghost.

When people want to get into more intense peppers,

I always recommend the ghost pepper to start with.

This happens to be a peach Bhut Jolokia.

The skin is really shiny and it's pretty smooth.

This pepper has a lot of crinkles in it.

Because it's long, there is a lot of space

for that capsaicin producing tissue to grow.

This has kind of a cinnamon note, or a vanilla note

when you cut it open.

There's a higher seed pocket on this pepper

and the ribs are really, really thin.

Look at that oil, even though it's got all this pith in it.

If you look inside, there's very, very few seeds.

It has more of a bitter tone to it.

I taste like a cinnamon or a vanilla flavor,

earthy tones to it.

This is more like, Okay, I'm going to make stew with this.

This one has very little heat to it

but for the novice or for the average person

they're going to think they're

eating something very, very hot.

Being one of my favorite peppers,

我going to put this on the more flavorful side

but I don't really think it's that spicy.

I gave this best all around pepper, but barely hot to me.

[music continues]

Chocolate Bhutlah.

This is a pepper that more people should know about.

The flavor is intense.

It is an amazing pepper to cook with

and it is an amazing pepper in sauce.

Because it was bred with the chocolate scorpion,

you should always expect this chocolate color.

There's a lot of little nooks and crannies

and a lot of bumps on this pepper.

It actually has the little spikes

on it that are indices of a lot of capsaicin production

and then usually they have this tri-lobe shape

so you get these two lobes up here and this lobe down here

and it kind of gives it the appearance of a face

and when I'm going through the field,

I like picking 'em out and I'll put one on the dashboard

and call it Charlie or something for the day

before I eat it.

We're going to name this one Tommy.

This is extremely thin-skinned, but if you look inside,

the pith is almost red.

It's got very dark tones to it

and the oils pool really quickly on the inside.

The air is bringing that capsaicin out through the skin.

I got a high seed pocket like some of the other super hots

but the ribs don't have seeds on them.

On these peppers, the seed pockets are the ones

, intrigue me 'cause that lets me know,

is it going to be viable

and am I going to be able to use it again next year.

Most of the chocolate peppers have huge amounts

of tannin in them.

The heavy tannins in this give it a unique flavor

that I've not found in any of the other chocolate peppers.

[pepper crunching]

I don't taste the heat right away.

What I get is that kind of citrusy floral flavor.

It spreads throughout the mouth and because the tannins

have activated on the sides of my tongue

and like in the cheeks and in my gums,

but then that heat builds and it's one of those burns

that starts in your throat and works its way up,

not the opposite way, so once that burn starts,

it's very, very hard to talk.

This is the only pepper so far

that has made me break a sweat.

I think these are amazing peppers to cook with.

This is one of the spicier peppers.

我going to place it right about here.

And I chose that unique flavor

because of the tannin experience that's happening

and the heat is great.

I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner

but if you like hot stuff in your food, this is one to use.

[music continues]

Red Scotch Bonnet.

I love the Scotch Bonnet.

I just didn't think it was hot enough

so I might have played around a little bit

with it and the Reaper.

these peppers are beautiful.

They look really smooth and classic

almost like a habanero,

but if you get up close you can see little teeny bumps.

The red ones are the best all around heat

and flavor in my opinion.

As you get lighter in colors

those have more fruity tones to them and less heat.

All varieties of true scotch bonnets are very, very hard.

It's almost like it's a rock pepper, okay?

When you squeeze them, they don't give.

The skin is very tough

and they've got a lot, a lot of seeds in them.

This pepper, because I bred it with the Carolina Reaper

has a lot more ridges in it than a normal Scotch Bonnet

so there's a lot more area for capsaicinoid production.

When you cut it open, you see the difference.

There's not really that many seeds inside

and they're pretty much combined to the upper pith.

The skin texture is not the same.

This one that's been bred with the Reaper

has a very thin skin as compared to this one,

that's with the Scotch Bonnet, which is very thick.

我going to taste both of these because I like them.

[Ed crunching peppers]

I could eat this all day long.

This is a pepper that just tastes delicious

and it augments everything you put it on.

There's no real heat to it for me,

for the normal person, they'd say,

Oh, that's a little bit warm,

but for me it's just like candy.

This one that's been crossed with the reaper

我not going to eat such a big piece of

because it's going to have that fruity sweetness up front

and then that heat's just going to build on right away.

That's the part I like.

As far as hot peppers go,

they're a medium pepper that anybody can enjoy.

This is one of my favorite peppers to use.

The flavor is unbelievable.

I don't think it's very hot at all.

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Red habanero.

Habaneros are known for their smooth skin.

They're also known for their unique shapes.

If you go to the habanero bin at your local grocery store,

it's hard to find two that are exactly the same.

Habaneros don't really have good heat

and the skin itself is a little bit thicker

than most of the hotter peppers that are out there.

They tend to look waxy.

That's the natural sheen of the pepper.

It's very thin walled, but the color

on the inside is more like the skin on the outside.

There's not a lot of that capsaicinoid

producing tissue on this pepper.

The seed pocket is pretty high and the ribs are pretty thin.

You don't get sweetness, you don't get like an earth tone.

You get like the tones you get out of honey.

You can tell that different flowers that are grown

that the honeys come from.

Right now I'm starting to experience that heat

say right about here in my throat

and it's working its way up my tongue.

The floral taste too is very overpowering.

I just don't like that experience.

I like it to pair with something,

not have to be melded with something.

Even though it's the most widely used pepper,

I believe that it is a very overrated pepper

and if you're really looking for a unique experience

there's plenty of other spectrums to go to.

The heat level on these peppers is not there

and the flavor is really bland

and for me it's blah, blah, blah.

[music continues]

Cayenne.

I've seen more varieties that are called cayenne

than any other variety of pepper.

They pair well with just about everything out there

from fish to foul to meat to cheese.

We've actually made ice cream with cayennes.

This variety is one that we've bred out

that is extremely tasty and it grows very large.

These are a very thick flesh cayenne.

When we grew this pepper out, one of the unique qualities

I loved about it was that it turned

from a really dark green all the way to a really vibrant red

but not all the green left when it was totally ripe.

We're just going to go down into the small part

and again into the big part.

Very little seeds.

You're going to get about a hundred seeds

as compared to a normal cayenne.

[pepper crunching]

It tastes like mother earth to me

and what I want to do is get something else

to put on it like a goat cheese

and maybe some rosemary or sage or something.

This is my favorite pepper.

They've got no heat at all,

and by no heat, I'm saying, you know

maybe 10,000 to 20,000 Scoville Heat Units.

I would rank it best all around pepper

as far as I'm concerned.

For the everyday cook.

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Fresno.

It is a bittersweet pepper.

It has the that kind of sweetness

that the jalapeno flesh has but right afterwards

comes a very bitter flavor.

They have a very unique quality to them.

When you're cooking with them,

it takes a lot to bring out the flavor.

You can't just mix it up and put it in a sauce

and get that unique Fresno flavor.

You have to cook slowly

and that brings the flavonoids that are really there

that that bitter side out to the prominence

so that you get a bitter experience first

and then the sweet.

You're going to see that just like the jalapeno,

it's a very thick fleshed pepper.

It's got a lot of seeds in it and a very high pith

as opposed to the long pith that the jalapeno had.

[Ed inhales deeply]

It smells like medicine.

[Ed chuckles]

It really does.

我想愚弄你吃我

but I'm not going to taste good once you eat me.

I don't use Fresno's raw.

I think they're excellent as far as sauces go.

[Ed bites into pepper]

On the fourth or fifth chew, you get this burst

of sweetness, but what it is, is bitter beforehand

and then bitter afterwards to me.

We've never had 'em over 3,000 Scoville when we tested them.

They're a very mild pepper.

Works really well in hot sauce

and works really well in cooking.

It's not a very tasty pepper at all

and it has no heat so I'm going to place it

in the bottom quadrant.

To me, it tastes like Angostura bitters.

It's got that little bit of sweetness

but unless you're mixing it

with something it's not worth having.

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Mustard Apocalypse.

I chose this Mustard Apocalypse that we've bred out.

This apocalypse, to me, is a much sweeter pepper

than its parent, the Maruga scorpion.

Now you can see this classic Maruga shape at the top.

It's got a lot of bumps in it.

It's just a thick walled pepper at the very top

of the pepper, but as you get down it gets a lot thinner

and a lot thinner and it has more give to it.

The tail to me is the fruitiest part of the pepper.

This one I love because it's really dynamic.

Fruity, floral, bitter, okay.

You get all three of those tones to it.

On the high side you got that thick seed wall

and the skin's a little bit thicker on the top

and then as you move down it gets

thinner and thinner and thinner.

It has a lot of pith to it

and the ribs are a little bit thicker

than your normal super hot.

I think that's why it has such a good heat.

There's not as much oil production in these

as there has been in other peppers,

but there is a lot of pith that's going

to be holding that capsaicin.

If you're going to eat it fresh,

it all depends on what you want to eat.

If you cut it down at the bottom,

you're going to get that fruity tone

that I was talking about.

If you get this middle section that's going to be more

of the floral that comes from the Maruga scorpion

or any of the other scorpions

and up at the top here where the pith is so thick

it's going to be bitter.

我going really thin on the top

because I know this is going to be bitter and smoking hot.

My favorite thing to do with this pepper is to use it

in salsas, but I also use it in condiments.

This pepper is extremely good for hot sauce

'cause you get a great heat without having that

overtone or overpowering heat.

It's a slow burn.

It's not that immediate, upfront, slap-in-the-face.

For those who are ready to go past the Ghost Pepper,

this is your next go-to pepper.

I think this is a lot more tasty than the Bhutlah

but it doesn't have that heat that I love going for.

I gave it a 3-in-1, above the Bhutlah,

because it has those three unique flavor profiles

just in one pepper.

[air whooshes]

There you have it.

这是一些我最喜欢的辣椒生长

and some of my favorite peppers to cook with.

Start on the low end.

Work your way up.

Most of all, it should be something that you enjoy

not something that destroys you.

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[milk pouring]

[carafe hits countertop]

[full glass sliding across surface]