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Ed Currie and his PuckerButt Pepper Company created the Carolina Reaper, which bagged the Guinness World Records title for spiciest chile pepper on the planet a decade ago. But at the time, Currie was already secretly working on one that was even hotter.
Currie, now 60, stashed it away, an ace in the hole to play on the day a rival breeder challenged Carolina Reaper’s spiciness supremacy, he told The Washington Post. The months turned to years, which turned into a decade, but that day never came.
Currie holds up his certification that his new Pepper X variety of peppers is the hottest in the world according to Guinness World Records on Oct. 10 in Fort Mill, S.C. © Jeffrey Collins/AP
“No one’s been able to take us out,” Currie said in a Monday episode of the hit YouTube series “Hot Ones,” “so I decided to bring it out to the world.”
Meet Pepper X.
On Monday, Guinness announced that Currie and PuckerButt had topped their own record. Pepper X had officially clocked in with an average of 2.69 million Scoville Heat Units, far spicier than the Carolina Reaper’s 1.64 million. Scoville Heat Units are the common measurement to gauge a chile’s spiciness, with the jalapeño registering between 3,000 and 8,000 SHUs, although Currie said even the large numerical disparity doesn’t fully capture the difference.
“The jalapeño is a roller skate,” Currie said. “Those super hot peppers are space shuttles.”
Until the “Hot Ones” episode was taped a few weeks ago, Currie was the only person who’d eaten an entire Pepper X. He did it again for the show. In an interview Tuesday with The Post, he said the pepper’s earthy flavor lasted for a split second, followed by a brutal heat that persisted for three hours, then stomach cramps that went on for four more.
“It just hurts like mad,” he said, adding that he eats whole peppers only when the cameras are on but usually eats smaller amounts mixed in with his food.
Currie started working on Pepper X about 12 years ago, he said. It’s a crossbreed of the Carolina Reaper and a pepper he declined to name but described as one “that a friend of mine sent me from Michigan that was brutally hot.” He grew eight to 12 generations of the pepper to hone and stabilize the heat and flavor he wanted.
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