The hottest pepper in the world

TERRY WARD knows his chili peppers.

He knows his favorite, the diminutive piquin, oblong and about the size of the tip of your pinky, a pepper that imparts heat but no taste.

He knows that when he has a pile of hot peppers to be chopped and seeded, it's best to move the whole operation into the backyard so the fumes don't get you.

And Ward knows that a bite of one of the pretty pointed peppers dangling from a hip-high potted plant on his deck can bring him to his knees.

The culprit: the bhut jolokia pepper, native to India, cultivated in the United States at New Mexico State University and certified by the Guinness Book of World Records to be the hottest pepper on the planet.

How hot? Consider the garden variety bell pepper. That registers zero on the Scoville Heat Unit scale. Original Tabasco Pepper Sauce maxes out at 5,000 units. Scotch bonnets tilt toward half a million units.

The bhut jolokia? More than 1 million units, meaning that it would have to be diluted with water at a ratio of 1 million-to-1 before the heat would subside.

"They will hurt you," said Ward, who is el past presidente of the local chapter of the Pepper Lovers Club. "They will bring tears to your eyes."

Ward and his wife, Marty, who live in Norfolk, are a couple of heat-seeking epicures. Two years ago, they were invited to the National Fiery Foods Show in New Mexico and while there, they bought 10 bhut jolokia seeds for $5.

New Mexico State's Chile Pepper Institute is still the only official source of bhut jolokia seeds, according to institute director Paul Bosland, who originally tested the hard-to-grow seeds and pushed for the pepper's world-record status.

Back home, Ward tended the seeds in his greenhouse and was happy with the 90 percent germination rate. A few weeks later, he started thinking that the project was a bust, but Ward is a patient and experienced gardener. He continued caring for the plants during the weeks that they grew nothing but foliage, applying bottom heat and supplying water for their insatiable thirst.

A couple of months later, Ward realized that the plant waits a long time to set fruit, but once it does, it is a prolific producer. By late September, the plant on his deck that he started in early spring sported more than a score of screaming red to red-orange peppers, the second flame of fruit this year.

Like Johnny Appleseed, he's scattering the plants and seeds among members of the Pepper Lovers Club. And he's figuring out uses for the hottest pepper of all. With heat like this, some think there is no culinary use for the bhut jolokia. But Ward has a palate that appreciates the sometimes subtle flavors that varieties of peppers impart.

To demonstrate, Ward fetches a cutting board and knife from his kitchen. He puts on a pair of disposable rubber gloves before picking a pepper from his plant.

"We practice safe peppers here," he joked.

He noted that the pepper has an aroma even before it is cut open, an unusual characteristic. Then he sliced the fruit lengthwise, pointing out the white pith where the seeds are attached, the hottest part of the pepper.

Barely touching a gloved finger to the inside of the pepper and then to the tip of the tongue resulted in no taste at all... for a second. Then the heat began to build and spread to the back of the throat. The heat level was bearable, but it was unmistakable and it lingered for more than five minutes.

"There's an almost citruslike taste," Ward said. "A nice, deep heat."

Ward likes to infuse soy sauce with his bhut jolokia. He used to submerge 10 habaneros in 2 quarts of soy to reach his desired level of heat. With the bhut jolokia, he only uses two. He's also used his bhuts to season peanut oil. He and his wife use the soy and oil to flavor spaghetti sauce or venison stew, but "mostly it's a novelty," Ward said.

Novelty or not, across the country, bhut jolokia is catching on among hotheads.

Companies are importing the pods and grinding them into powders that sell for about $15 a jar or making sauces with names like Lava and Naga Sabi Bomb that sell for as much as $30 for a Tabasco-sized bottle. One comes packed in its own coffin.

Bosland, the New Mexico State professor, is not surprised by the swift commercialization of the bhut jolokia. He believes that America's palate is changing and becoming more acclimated to hot foods, especially with people 30 and younger.

And it's not impossible that some hobbyist out there will propagate a pepper even hotter than the bhut jolokia. Pure capsaicin, the substance that makes peppers hot, ranks 16 million Scoville units. "Theoretically," he said, "we could go toward that."

But with the heat come the hellions who want to prove something by eating one of these flame-shaped peppers. For them, Bosland offers this bit of caution.

"You can blister your hands if you break open the pods to get the seeds. If you ignored the pain, you could blister your mouth, but it would probably take quite a few drinks before anyone would do that."

Ward won't bring the peppers to his club's booth at local festivals for much the same reason.

"I know," Ward said, "that some idiot would try to eat one."

Lorraine Eaton, (757) 446-2697 lorraine.eaton@pilotonline.com