Hot Stuff: South Carolina’s ‘Pepper X’ Shatters World Record With 2.6 Million SHU
Ed Currie has done it again. The owner of PuckerButt Pepper Company in Fort Mill, South Carolina, has broken his own world record for developing the spiciest chili pepper on the planet. Are you ready for Pepper X?
Currie already held the record with his iconic Carolina Reaper pepper. On October 9, 2023, the Guinness World Record for “hottest chili pepper” was awarded to the even spicier Pepper X. This new mouth-melting nightshade is actually the result of cross-breeding with the Carolina Reaper. It took Currie about ten years to do it.
To get an idea of how hot this thing is, a poblano pepper is about 1,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU), a jalapeno pepper averages 5,000 SHU, and a habanero pepper, one of the spiciest non-hybrid peppers, is about 100,000 SHU. The Carolina Reaper clocks in at a frightening 1,640,000 million SHU. A team at Winthrop University in Rock Hill determined that the Pepper X blows all those peppers away at an irresponsible 2,693,000 SHU. It packs more punch than pepper spray and bear spray!
Pepper X isn’t just hot. It’s painful. Currie, himself, admits that eating one is not a pleasant experience. He told AP News, “I was feeling the heat for three-and-a-half hours. Then the cramps came.” He added, “Those cramps are horrible. I was laid out flat on a marble wall for approximately an hour in the rain, groaning in pain.”
For now, Pepper X is being kept proprietary, meaning pods and seeds will not be made commercially available. The public can try the pepper through the release of Pepper X hot sauces. In the meantime, you can watch Ed Currie unleash the beast on Sean Evans’ YouTube series, Hot Ones, below. Oh, and Currie hints that he may already be working on something even hotter.
