Michigan Helped Spawn New World Record For Hottest Pepper

There's a show on Youtube called "Hot Ones" on the "First we Feast" channel, where host Sean Evans interviews celebrities as they eat increasingly hotter chicken wings.

Seems simple enough, until you get to the "last dab," which is typically made with the hottest pepper on the planet. Until recently, it was an Apollo sauce made with the previous record pepper for heat. But now, say hello to the new record holder - Pepper X - and it has ties to Michigan.

It's an ugly little bugger, and relatively small when compared to a jalapeno, but this is no jalapeno. Pepper X was conceived by pepper farmer and cultivator Smokin' Ed Currie, who also owns Puckerbutt Pepper Company. Currie's sauces, and his record-setting peppers are perennial characters on the Hot Ones series on Youtube, and while talking with host Sean Evans, he said he's had Pepper X ready for almost a decade.

"We stabilized it a while ago, and it's been in the war chest for about a decade now, but we've been waiting to take it out... I decided to take it out for the world."

Currie breeds his peppers by crossing several other existing peppers, and one of the originators of this species of pepper came from Michigan.

"A friend of mine in Michigan sent me a pepper that was brutally hot. It also had a really cool look to it. So I bred that pepper with the Carolina Reaper, And the initial pepper that came out of that was just ugly and bumpy, and nasty... and we decided on that year to start breeding it... It turned out to be a brutally hot pepper, hotter than the Reaper, and we just kept that process going."

Hot doesn't even begin to explain how insane this pepper is. Measured on the Scoville Scale, an average jalapeno is about 5,000 units on the Scoville Scale. Pepper X, now the Guinness World Record Holder for hottest pepper on the planet, comes in at 2.9 million Scoville units.

What's worse... Currie says he has peppers in the works that are even HOTTER, but won't be ready for another 5 years.

Until then, though, Currie now holds the record for Pepper X, and debuted it, and his award on a recent episode of Hot Ones, where he, Sean, and other "Pepper Heads" in the industry try it for the first time.

And MAN is it fun to watch them writhe in pain. You can watch that below.

Now the question remains... would you try Pepper X?