New chili pepper crowned world’s hottest

Fighting fire with more fire -- and a WWF-worthy name -- there's a new champ holding the title of  world's hottest chili pepper. As you may recall, in December The Lookout reported on the Naga Viper and its initiation as the chili pepper with the most heat. But now there's a hotter ticket in town:  the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T. Yes, the Butch T. outdistances the Naga Viper, barely, on the Scoville scale -- which rates spice power by tracking the presence of a chemical compound in chilis. The Australian Butch T. weighs in at 1.46 million heat units on the scale, while the British Naga Viper tops out at 1.38 million. For comparison, the average jalapeno pepper falls around 5,000. "They're just severe, absolutely severe," Marcel de Wit, co-owner of the chili farm that produced the pepper, told Australian Geographic. "No wonder they start making crowd-control grenades now with chillies. It's just wicked."...more