World’s Hottest Chile Ever, Naga Viper

A farmer in England — of all places — just interbred three of the world’s hottest chiles to create the most caliente chile on the planet. He calls it the naga viper. Brit farmer Gerald Fowler interbred the bhut jolokia, naga morich and Trinidad scorpion to make what he and English researchers call the world’s hottest chile.

Jalapeños are kind of hot (to me), usually about 2,500 – 8,000 on the Scoville scale, which measures hotness. The bhut jolokia is 1,001,304 Scoville units. Fowler’s new naga viper measures 1,359,000 on the Scoville scale, according to research from the University of Warwick in England.

That sounds hot! Too hot to eat, even! And, according to Fowler the naga viper is too hot to eat. “It’s painful to eat. It numbs your tongue, then burns all the way down. It can last an hour, and you just don’t want to talk to anyone or do anything. But it makes you feel great. It’s hot enough to strip paint.”

¡Hijole!