Day 18: Hot Stuff!

This morning I was making chorizo omelets for breakfast. Since I was using sweet chorizo and wanted a bit of a kick of spice, I added a mix of Byadgi chili powder and another local orange chili powder, which is much hotter.

The bright red Byadgi was for dramatic effect, but I had to back it up with the hotter orange chili powder, because Byadgi chilies, it turns out, only measure 9000-15000 SHU.

What does this mean?

Capsaicin is a chemical compound in chilies that gives them their characteristic burning heat; the greater the concentration of capsaicin, the spicier the chili.

The concentration of capsaicin in a chili is measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU). A pharmacist named Wilber Scoville devised this scale in 1912 to measures the spiciness of chilies.

The test Wilber originally devised involved dissolving the capsaicin extract from the chili being measured in a sugar solution, and the sugar solution being diluted more and more, until a panel of tasters could no longer detect the spice. So if a chili measured say 2000 SHU, it meant that the capsaicin solution was diluted 2000 times before it stopped tasting spicy!

As you can imagine, this was not a very accurate test, because spice tolerance is very subjective (imagine if one panelist had a Telugu tongue and another a European one…!). Now the test is done by chromatography.

To put the 9000-15000 SHU of the Byadgi chili in context, here are the heat levels of a few well-known chili peppers:

Capsicum -- also known as sweet bell pepper -- comes in first, at Zero SHU.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Red_capsicum_and_cross_section.jpg

Then is the Jalapeno at 2500 to 8000 SHU. I can say from experience that many Indians don’t find this very different from Capsicum. Hahah!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Immature_jalapeno_capsicum_annuum_var_annuum.jpeg

Byadgi (9000 to 15000 SHU) features a little higher on the scale than jalapenos. Their “bright” is louder than their bite.

Habaneros, the famous hot Mexican peppers that have 100,000 to 350,000 SHU, are more than ten times as spicy as Byadgi!

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Habanero_chile_-_flower_with_fruit_(aka).jpg

The Naga Bhut Jolokia, aka, Ghost Pepper, comes in at 1.6 million SHU. At one point this chili was actually a strong contender as the hottest chili in the world!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BhutJolokia09_Asit.jpg

And last, but most definitely not the least, pepper spray – which doesn’t sound as incredibly toxic as it really is – boasts a whopping 5 million SHU! Crazy, right?

If this post has inspired you to get adventurous with your use of chilies you might also want to know that Capsaicin is hydrophobic. This means water is utterly useless is disarming that raging spice on your tongue. Your best defense against it is a glass of cold milk. Milk contains a protein called casein, which pulls molecules of capsaicin off your tongue, so it immediately stops the burning. I speak from experience when I say it even works when you clumsily use chilified hands to scratch your face or arms, or to touch other people!