Grill Maestro

I love spicy food.

I, however, don’t love face-numbing, lip-burning, tears-until-I’m-dehydrated, could-drink-a-whole-cow level spicy food. Fortunately, there’s a scale called the Scoville scale to measure the hotness of any particular chili pepper to guide me on what’s too much for me.

Peppers work because they contain a chemical compound called capsaicin. Capsaicin stimulates the chemoreceptor nerve endings in your skin to make it seem like you’re burning (hence, hot). The Scoville scale is measured in Scoville heat units and that’s really a measure of how much capsaicin is in the pepper.

What’s the hottest known chili? The picture above is the Naga Jolokia Bangladeshi Chili Pepper with a Scoville heat unit range of 855,000 to 1,041,427. The typical habanero chili has a range of 100,000 to 350,000. Cayenne finds itself in the 30-50k range and a Jalapeno pepper is rated between 2,500 to 8,000. (The bell pepper has a rating of zero)