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'When you eat it, it's like dying.' Sounds delicious!

By Tim Sullivan

August, 2007 CHANGPOOL, India – The farmer, a quiet man with an easy smile, has spent a lifetime eating a chili pepper with a strange name and a vicious bite. His mother stirred them into sauces. His wife puts them out for dinner raw, blood-red morsels of pain to be nibbled – carefully, very carefully – with whatever she's serving.

Around here, in the hills of northeastern India, it's called the “bhut jolokia” – the “ghost chili.” Anyone who has tried it, they say, could end up an apparition.

Advertisement “It is so hot you can't even imagine,” said the farmer, Digonta Saikia. “When you eat it, it's like dying.”

If you think you've had a hotter chili pepper, you're wrong.

The smallest morsels can flavor a sauce so intensely it's barely edible. Eating a raw sliver causes watering eyes and a runny nose. An entire chili is an all-out assault on the senses, akin to swigging a cocktail of battery acid and glass shards.

The rest of the world should prepare itself.

With scientific proof that barreled the bhut jolokia into the Guinness World Records book – it has more than 1 million Scoville units, the scientific measurement of a chili's spiciness – northeastern India is taking its thumb-sized chili to the outside world.

Exporters are eagerly courting the international community of rabid chili-lovers, a group that has traded stories for years about a mysterious, powerful Indian chili. Farmers are planting new fields of bhut jolokias, government officials are talking about development programs.

Chances are no one will get rich. But in a region where good news is a rarity, the world record status has meant a lot of pride – and a little more business. “It has got tremendous potential,” says Leena Saikia, the managing director of Frontal AgriTech, a food business in the northeastern state of Assam that has been in the forefront of bhut jolokia exports.

Last year, her company shipped out barely a ton of the chilis. This year, amid the surge in publicity, the goal is 10 tons to nearly a dozen countries.

For now, at least, transport issues and a tangle of government regulations mean most exports are of dried bhut jolokias and chili paste. But, Saikia added, the paste can be used for everything from hot sauces to tear gas. Because the heat is so concentrated, food manufacturers in need of seasoning can use far less bhut jolokia than they would normal chilies.

Only in the past few years, though, has the rest of the world even heard of it. The first reports filtered out in 2000, when the government's Assam-based Defense Research Laboratory announced the bhut jolokia as the world's hottest chili. But their tests, reportedly done during research on tear gas, took years to be corroborated.

The confirmation came earlier this year from New Mexico State University's Chile Pepper Institute, where spiciness is a religion. The institute got its first bhut jolokia seeds in 2001, but it took years to grow enough peppers for testing.

Their results, backed up by two independent labs and heralded by Guinness, were astonishing.

A chili's spiciness can be scientifically measured by calculating its content of capsaicin, the chemical that gives a pepper its bite, and counting its Scoville units.

And how hot is the bhut jolokia?

As a way of comparison: Classic Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units. Your basic jalapeno pepper measures anywhere from 2,500 to 8,000. The previous record holder, the Red Savina habanero, was tested at up to 580,000 Scovilles.

The bhut jolokia crushed those contenders, testing at 1,001,304 Scoville units.

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