Scoville | Cooking With Fire

The Naga Jolokia (the name originates from the ferocious Naga warriors what once inhabited Nagaland, an area in the far north-east part of India), also known as the Bhut Jolokia, ghost or cobra chile, is considered to be the hottest in the world. The Guiness World Records certified in 2007 that the Naga Jolokia was the hottest chile pepper recorded to date, being 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce.

The Naga Jolokia is found in Bangladesh, the Assam region of northeastern India and Sri Lanka. These fiery little peppers (2 – 3 1/2 inches long and 1 to 1 1/2 inches wide) range in units of heat on the Scoville scale from 850,000 units to 1,042,000. For comparison purposes, Tabasco sauce measures from 2,500 to 5,000 units. Yikes! The Scoville rating of these chiles is dramatically impacted by the climate they are grown in (they will have far less heat if grown in an arid versus a humid climate).

Believe it or not, this chile is used in India as a homeopathic remedy for stomach ailments, as a spice to induce perspiration in the heat of summer (for natural air-conditioning purposes), in smoke bombs or smeared on fences to keep wild elephants away, as a hand grenade ingredient for crowd and terrorist control, and as a pepper spray ingredient for police use and self-defence.

In 1912, a pharmacist by the name of Wilbur Scoville developed a method to measure the heat level of chile peppers. The pungency is measured in multiples of 100 units from the bell pepper, which rates at zero, to the fire-breathing habanero, which measures in at the highest end of the scale at three hundred thousand. The units of measurement are referred to as “Scoville units” or “Scovilles” and are best described as units of dilution. A chile that rates 1 Scoville unit would take 1 unit of water to negate the heat. For example, it would take 30,000 to 50,000 units of water to neutralize a Tabasco pepper.

These days, many chile lovers use a new system which is referred to as the Official Chile Heat Scale, which rates the heat of chiles from 0 to 10. On this simpler scale, bell peppers still rate as 0 and habaneros rate at the top end of the scale with a 10. Comparatively, jalapenos rate as 5, serranos at 6, and cayennes and Tabascos at 8.

It’s interesting that regardless of the heat rating that a chile may have, everyone’s palate is different and some lower registering chiles will taste hotter to some people than a higher registering chile. For example, an East Indian dish may taste very hot to someone used to Mexican spicing, even though the chiles used measure lower on the heat scale.

Fortunately, most chile lovers are more concerned with flavor than with the heat measurement!