Kitchen Notes: Scoville Units
Some chiles are so hot that they literally kill taste buds. Other chiles? Not so much. But how do you know how hot a chile is (before tasting it and potentially ending up in pain)? Believe it or not, there is a scientific system for measuring and rating the "hotness" of chiles.
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Wikipedia's article on the Scoville scale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville) mentions that "Scoville ratings may vary considerably within a species—easily by a factor of 10 or more—depending on seed lineage, climate and even soil. This is especially true of habaneros." Thanks for your article though, I would've never known otherwise that tasting spicy things comes from a sensation of pain signal...
k, you're joking right?
You obviously haven't had spicy food that's spicy enough!
I have a bottle of Dave's Ultimate Insanity Sauce in the fridge. It's about 250,000 Scovilles, if memory serves.
One drop is enough for my chili con carne.
I learned about the Scoville measurement while on an elementary school field trip to Avery Island (home of Tabasco). I recommend the visit to anyone in south Louisiana.
While there I bought some of their peppers, which added a nice touch to my dad's homemade picante salsa. Had to get a Tabasco tie also =)
I thought that chipotles were just smoked jalepenos, and as such, shouldn't they have the same scoville rating?
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Chipotles are roasted jalapeños, but I think that process makes them even hotter.
I'm Mexican (raised in Mexico) and don't eat chilies, what a joke eh?! Never heard of this scale for measuring hotness. All I know is, my cousins from Puebla cannot live without habaneros, they eat them by the handful, raw, by themselves... geez! I think it's funny some people write habañeros... no tilde needed on the N people!! Haha.
I love your page, I'm a frustrated engineer, and cook!
Somehow my post was deleted so I'm posting again! -=\
Interesting piece of trivia for you...
Here in Australia, 'bell peppers' are called Capsicums. Until reading your article I never knew the reason - I am assuming now it has something to do with the name of this chemical Capsaicin.
It led to a lot of confusion and intrigue when I visited Subway in the States. ("You want *what* on your sandwich?!")
re: Chipotle
Yes, I wondered about that as well, but all the listings I've found have chipotles as having a higher Scoville rating than jalapenos. I suppose the smoking process converts some of the chemicals in the membrane into more capsaicinoids, but I don't really know. If I have time, I'll look into this further.
re: Bell peppers or capsicums?
Capsicum is the genus of all chiles from bell peppers to habaneros. The name of the chemical capsaicin comes from the name for chile - capsicum.
Thanks for the article!
The day after I set up a blog for my new job at peppertalk.salsaexpress.com with you in the links even!
Having grown up on hot food – our school cafateria had pickle jars of all-you-can-eat jalapenos on the tables – I am what some people may consider (judging from previous comments) either masochistic or insane. So now I work for a "Fiery Foods" company as part of an absolutely crazy and fun industry!
I too love to eat habaneros raw. They have a definite kick but they also have a fruity flavor to them. That fruitiness makes them excellent peppers for use in desserts, fruit salsas and other fruit (especially citrus) recipes. Thai's though are all attitude. Not quite as hot, but no fruitiness. Every pepper has it's own unique flavor, and even substrains have very distinctive flavors as well as heat levels. Some build in heat as you eat more of them, some stay at the same level.
Dave's Ultimate Insanity, has a couple challengers to the title of th hottest hot sauce now... there's Dave's own challenger to the title "Dave's Ultimate Insanity Limited Reserve" label, and there's "Endorphin Rush" (you can find them at Salsa Express among other places.)
Whatever you do don't use these sauces like you might use Tobasco. I made that mistake once. Thought I grabbed the tobasco and put a good 5-6 shakes into a tomato soup. Wow! It took a half gallon of milk and a pint of ice cream to get my mouth back to near normal. And remember I do eat hab's raw!
I always wondered about the Australian way of refering to peppers. Capsicum is the genus name of the nightshade family of plants that includes both Bell Peppers (C. annuum) and the habanero (C. chinense) so it definitely makes sense...just different.
MORE TRIVIA
Did you know that birds can't taste hot peppers?
Apparently, a lot of the peppers rely on birds for seed dispersal. The hot flavor discourages mammals from eating them, but not birds.
EVEN MORE TRIVIA
Did you know that vampire bats have no sense of taste?
They drink blood, and there isn't much useful information one can get from the taste of blood. Blood from a living animal is never toxic.
I don't think HPLC would be that expensive an analytical method to use for measuring capsaicin levels. The wine industry use this technique regularly for other things and if the chile industry could get a bulk testing deal it's quite straightforward. The instruments can be automated so the labour cost would be minimal.
re: chipotles having a higher Scoville rating
I wonder if it's possible that the smoking process removes some of the water content - so that more parts are included in the HPLC test. (at least I think that's what I understood about the process) Sort of the same way that fresh herbs are not as intensely flavoured as the same quantity of dried herbs.
I'm surprised that "piri-piri" or "African birdseye" chilis - the ones that look like tiny Thai chilis - are missing from that list. Some people argue that the piri-piri is the hottest. (Of course, I cannot find anything on the net that corroborates this....)
Two summers ago, we did some taste tests of various Salsas made from dried chilies that may be of interest to any of you chiliheads.
I was always boasting that the Scotch Bonnet pepper from my home country - Jamaica - was the hottest. It indeed was, along with the Habanero, topping out above 300,000. Recently though, some insane masochists in California have bred a type of Habanero that starts above 300,000 and goes up over 500,000. The soil has a lot to do with the heat, but the pepper apparently needs to mature on the plant in order to reach its maximum. The ones we buy in the supermarket here in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) are immature, probably to survive shipping. My father grows some good ones through the winter in his kitchen in his secret soil mixture.
When I was little, my grandmother used to put one whole in several gallons of soup then let me stir with a strong warning to not break the pepper because the soup would be too hot to eat. I "experimented" and proved her very right.
Capsaicin actually refers to a family of compounds, which vary in their "heat," explaining why diferent species of peppers (which produce slightly chemically different capsaicins) have different "heat" (and also where they "hit" you - tongue, back of throat, etc.) in addition to the quantity (and mixture) of capsaicin in the plant tissue.
This also is a good reason why it's a good idea to combine different "heats" (tabasco, habanero, cayenne, plus black AND white pepper) in a recipe. Paul Prud'homme explains this principle in his cookbooks (gumbo recipes).
I bought a small bottle of 120K 'Da Bomb Beyond Insanity' sauce 5 years ago. While I used to buy 2 bottles of regular Tabasco at $3 each per year - needing full tablespoons to season my food - this $10 bottle is only about 15% gone now, and still good. It may last the rest of my life...
HPLC is used in the Industry to test Chiles the cost is still rather prohibitive for the average grower..
Trust me I know I was a List member on the now it seems defunct Chileheads List for 10 years..
I currently am growing Houston USA sourced Tepins here in OZ (why because the little shits are hard to grow, and I take it as a Personal Challenge".. FWIW i won 2 out of three local Chile Eating contests here, first time was 1 15 oz glass of blended chiles Habanero's included second time was 12 Habaneros , third time as defending champ i was nobbled by being made to take a small tub of Extract based sauced probably 350k scovies before participating and even then the guy who beat me swallowed several Habaneros whole.. "we were supposed to chew them for the ammusement of the 2000+ crowd..
FWIW Blairs Death sauce brand has more flavour than Daves, Std disclaimers apply although I did have snail mail intercourse with Blair Lazar once in 95-96..
A Fireman mate of mine Jim Campbell in Franklin Indiana does a mean apple smoked habanero Flake and lots of other products, no disclaimer apply here as he does send me a care package of new products from time to time
Luke in OZ
If anyone wants to read a pretty fascinating book on one man's disovery (or rediscovery, as it were) of the pepper, look up Amal Naj's "Peppers." C. 1992; ISBN 0-679-74427-4. It's a good a read as any, though may be a bit dated now. I think it holds up and is still a substantial store of knowledge and information for me...
Hey all, I am now the food science intern at the company that makes the worlds hottest hot sauce. Original Juan Specialty Foods makes "The Source" registering at 7.1 million scoville units, making it nearly half pure capsaicin and somewhere near tear gas. We send most of our product off to get tested for on the scoville scale and actually part of what I'm doing here is figuring out the feasability of doing it in house. You can get all of our products online (including the above mentioned Da Bomb) at http://www.originaljuan.com
how come they dont jus take the capsaican out and put it in a bottle that would kick ass
Someone did and charge $199 for it: Blair's 16 Million Reserve He's sold out.
For a more reliable but not as cool source, try a chemical supply company that will gladly sell you a gram of synthetic capsaicin for around $650 (natural will run you $950): Fisher Scientific
Finally, here's a list of manufacturers of pure capsaicin:
Buyers Guide Chem
ok... all right.. but.. if I want make at home a scoville test, u know the exact procedures?
(exampe: take xxx grams of peppers, keep in xxx ml of alcohol, etc>).
many thanks.
Chipotles are smoked and dried red jalepenos. The drying process will reduce the weight by as much as 10 to 1 and therefore increase the heat by the same ratio.
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