Bhut Jolokia is No Joke...ia

Holy moly, this pepper is hot. Wow. The Naga or Bhut Jolokia, commonly called the Ghost Chili in the US, most likely because it will continue to scald your taste-buds long after you're dead, is typically regarded as the hottest pepper in the world.

Any food product that has a subsection labeled "Use as a Weapon" on Wikipedia has me intrigued, so I had to buy some. I also have a penchant for hot and spicy foods, but this may be above and beyond my comfort zone. I bought a small dried can almost a year ago and sprinkle it on my food every so often when I'm in the mood to ruin a perfectly good meal and sweat profusely.

To use some science and numbers to explain how hot this pepper is, it scores somewhere between 855,000 and 1,000,000 on the Scoville scale. I have only two things to say about that:

• What kind of terrifying scale goes up to 1,000,000? Was it designed by mad scientists? I bet it was.
• Holy shit, I don't even need a comparison - something that's rated 1,000,000 on a hotness scale is probably going to kill me.

I'll give you a comparison anyway: Tabasco comes in at about 2,500-5,000. Pure capsaicin comes in at a stupid 15 to 16 million.

Recommended uses include:

• Dares & challenges.
• Ruining perfectly edible food. Pastas, rice dishes, beans, meats - there's really nothing you can't ruin with this stuff.
• Simulating the effects of pepper spray if you throw some in boiling water and neglect to turn on the vent, as I did.

You will find no shortage of these peppers and their seeds available online, but I recommend the powdered variety. If you're a pansy like me, it will last you a long time, but if not you could be bold and buy the 3-pack I suppose. Real stone-cold killers buy the 2.2lb bag and probably rub it in their eyes in the morning the wake themselves up.