[Vision2020] Now that sounds good.

[heirdoug at netscape.net]

To all the Chile/Chili lovers out there check this story out.


The Times April 01, 2006
The chilli so hot you need gloves
By Simon de Bruxelles

THE world’s hottest chilli pepper does not come from a tropical hot 
spot where the locals are impervious to its fiery heat but a 
smallholding in deepest Dorset.



Some chillis are fierce enough to make your eyes water. Anyone 
foolhardy enough to eat a whole Dorset Naga would almost certainly 
require hospital treatment.

The pepper, almost twice as hot as the previous record- holder, was 
grown by Joy and Michael Michaud in a poly- tunnel at their market 
garden. The couple run a business called Peppers by Post and spent four 
years developing the Dorset Naga.

They knew the 2cm-long specimens were hot because they had to wear 
gloves and remove the seeds outdoors when preparing them for drying, 
but had no idea they had grown a record-breaker.

Some customers complained the peppers were so fiery that even half a 
small one would make a curry too hot to eat. Others loved them and the 
Michauds sold a quarter of a million Dorset Nagas last year. At the end 
of last season Mrs Michaud sent a sample to a laboratory in America out 
of curiosity. The owner had never tested anything like it.

According to Mrs Michaud, the hottest habañero peppers popular in 
chilli-eating competitions in the US generally measure about 100,000 
units on the standard Scoville scale, named after its inventor, Wilbur 
Scoville, who developed it in 1912. At first the scale was a subjective 
taste test but it later developed into the measure of capsaicinoids 
present. The hottest chilli pepper in The Guinness Book of Records is a 
Red Savina habañero with a rating of 570,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU).

Mrs Michaud was stunned when the Dorset Naga gave a reading of nearly 
900,000SHU. A fresh sample was sent to a lab in New York used by the 
American Spice Trade Association and recorded a mouth-numbing 
923,000SHUs.

Mrs Michaud said: “The man in the first lab was so excited — he’d never 
had one even half as hot as that. The second lab took a long time 
because they were checking it carefully as it was so outrageously 
high.”

The Dorset Naga was grown from a plant that originated in Bangladesh. 
The Michauds bought their original plant in an oriental store in 
Bournemouth. Mrs Michaud said: “We weren’t even selecting the peppers 
for hotness but for shape and flavour. There is an element of machismo 
in peppers that we aren’t really interested in. When the results of the 
heat tests came back I was gobsmacked.”

The couple are now seeking Plant Variety Protection from the Department 
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which will mean that no one 
else can sell the seeds.

Mrs Michaud, 48, has run the company with her husband at West 
Bexington, near Dorchester, for ten years. Mr Michaud, 56, has been a 
regular on the television chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River 
Cottage series, advising on vegetable growing.

Anyone wanting to try the Dorset Naga will have to be patient as 
chillis are harvested only from July on. In Bangladesh the chillies 
grow in temperatures of well over 100F (38C) but in Dorset they thrive 
in polytunnels.

Aktar Miha, from the Indus Bangladeshi restaurant in Bournemouth, said 
that even in its home country the naga chilli was treated with respect. 
“It is used in some cooking, mainly with fish curries, but most people 
don’t cook with it. They hold it by the stalk and just touch their food 
with it,” he said.

“It has a refreshing smell and a very good taste but you don’t want too 
much of it. It is a killer chilli and you have to be careful and wash 
your hands and the cutting board. If you don’t know what you are doing 
it could blow your head off.”

FROM HOT TO NOT

Scoville Heat Units
Pure capsaicin: 15m to 16m
US Police-grade pepper spray: 5m
Dorset Naga: 923,000
Red Savina habanero: 577,000
Scotch bonnet: 100,000-325,000
Jamaican hot pepper: 100,000-200,000
Cayenne pepper: 30,000-50,000
Jalapeno pepper: 2,500-8,000
Tabasco sauce: 2,500
Pimento: 100 to 500
Bell pepper: 0



And for all the chile lovers order from here 
http://www.zianet.com/focus/places/HATCH.HTM

Have a great Christmas.


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