The world has a new hottest pepper. And it comes from our backyard, right in Fort Mill. The Guinness Book of World Records recently certified Pepper X, as it’s called. Just how hot is it? The heat in peppers is measured in Scoville Heat Units. Your typical jalapeño measures about 5,000 Scoville units. Pepper X measures nearly 2.7 million units. The pepper was developed by Ed Currie, founder of the PuckerButt Pepper Company. Currie beat his own hottest pepper record which he held for a decade with his Carolina Reaper pepper. He joins me now.
Marshall Terry: So Ed, we've met before — back when Carolina Reaper was being certified the world's hottest.
Ed Currie: Yes, we have.
Terry: I came to your house and tried it. It put me on the floor. It was overwhelming, and it was painful. This new one you've developed. Pepper X is three times hotter than that. Why? Why did you feel the need to go hotter?
Currie: Well, the hotter we go, the less we have to use to make products, one. Two, the hotter we go, the more that the medicinal benefits of the pepper can be used by scientists. So it's really a two-fold thing. Plus, people said I couldn't do it. So, as you know, I'm always up for a challenge.
Terry: Now you mentioned just a minute ago the medicinal part of it. I remember when we met, you told me that part of your interest in peppers is research showing that one of the components of chili peppers — capsaicin — can be used to treat cancer. I guess that's something that still motivates you?
Currie: Oh, yeah, that still motivates me. I've turned all, all of my research over to doctors. And all around the world, they're studying capsaicin for not only cancer, but heart disease, obesity, ALS, addiction. There's a whole bunch of things.
Terry: Well, getting back to Pepper X specifically, now I am not going to try this one like I did with Carolina Reaper.
Currie: I wouldn't let you.
Terry: Well, I appreciate that. I'm going to rely on you to tell me what it's like. What is it like to eat this thing? What did it do to you when you did eat it?
Currie: Well, when we normally eat them, we slice it up into little teeny pieces and eat it with food. But when I ate a whole one, the flavor lasted a millisecond and then the heat was unbearable. I know to chew peppers for a long time because saliva is an integral part of the digestive process. But when I swallowed that thing, it was like a nuclear bomb went off, and the heat just became unbearable. It took me about six hours to recover from that pepper. Once I recovered, we went out to eat. We ate more peppers. But, you know, my wife thinks I'm an idiot, you know, and I do stupid stuff.
Terry: You're talking about six hours, as you mentioned, the effects of this pepper. I mean, that just sounds awful, frankly. So what's the appeal for you?
Currie: Eating them whole, there is real no appeal, other than no one besides me had done it. And I just wanted to be the first to do it and survive it. You know, frankly, I won't do it again unless someone pays me a whole lot of money.
Terry: What's the competition like to grow the world's hottest pepper? Are there many other people out there like you trying to do this? And how do you keep your new peppers safe? How do you keep your secrets safe?
Currie: Well, we keep them safe by hiding them and putting cameras where they are. And only very few people know where we grow them, and only very few people produce products with them. If you go online, it looks like there's a race to breed the hottest pepper — but if there was one, someone would have beat my record over the last decade. There's only a few of us, and it's mostly people in universities that actually are breeding peppers to become hotter to see how hot they can go.
And, you know, the majority of what we breed is not for heat. It's for flavor — because if you can't make it commercially valuable, it's only good for the few hundred of us who can eat these peppers. You know, the rest of the world doesn't do that.
Terry: Well, it's been more than a decade since the Carolina Reaper was certified as the world's hottest pepper. That's the one that you beat with Pepper X. How has your life changed since then? I mean, what's it like being Ed Currie — the hottest pepper guy?
Currie: What it's like is I still get up at 4 a.m. and start working on the business and working on peppers. We get to the farm before the crack of dawn and it's all day long until we get home. And then I'm doing emails all night long. A lot of people think, you know, that I'm just a guy who sits back and collects money from the bank account, but I'm not.
I'm a hands-on worker all day long. I was working in the drying room right before this happened. And right now I'm spicy, and I really want to rub my eyes. But I know what's gonna happen if I rub my eyes, because I got something in my right eye.
Terry: OK, so you've topped your own record with the world's hottest pepper. So what's next? Are you going to go even hotter?
Currie: Well, you know, there's a few that can potentially go hotter. Knowing who I am, I'm probably going to pursue those peppers, but what's next for me is taking care of my family. I have small children. We're coming up on Christmastime. It's time to after the harvest is done, focus on the family for a little bit.
Terry: Are they into peppers, too?
Currie: Only when they want extra ice cream, you know, they'll eat something hot off my plate and then tell their mother, ‘Ohh, I ate some of daddy's peppers. I need ice cream.’
