Scoville Scale.... Just how hot is hot??

Naga Jolokia: India's hottest chili pepper in the world!

Being addicted to chilis and hot food, I tried to search for the articles on chilis. Amongst the countless articles I found through exhaustive search on the web, I ended up at the article on Scoville Scale! Scoville Scale.... heck what is that? Yeah, this is something new to me as well, Scoville scale is a scale for measuring the hotness of chilis! Or if you read the article at Wiki, the term hotness is replaced by the word 'piquancy', a term that is not exactly synonymous. Then how do they scale the scale?? That's what I wondered too at the beginning before I read the article, but as I continued reading I began to see light on the scale. I will give you here the outline, for the detail about the scale you can look into it at Wiki (or elsewhere on the Web), the complete explanation is there to be read.

At first, I had no idea how they measure the hotness of a chili. Do they have to put it in the mouths and feel the hotness on their tongues? Well if that is how they do it to measure it, then the result would contain much subjectivity since the human's natural sensors are poor measuring tools for external stimuluses. Then how do they do it? It's apparently simple. All chilis contain a natural chemical compound called 'capsaicin', the compound that gives rise to a burning sensation at the neuro-receptor in your tongue (or even in your skin!). That's why as you chew the chilis you will sense the hotness on your tongue. Now to begin measuring the hotness of the chili, all you have to do is to dilute the extract of the chili in sugar water until the hotness is no longer detected in the chili or the capsaicin in the extract is completely diluted in the water. The degree of dilution will then give the reading of the measurement. For example, the bell peppers (aka the paprikas) have no capsaicin at all, it means that the scoville rating of a paprika is zero. On the other hand, the hottest chili pepper in the western hemisphere called habañero has the scoville rate of 200,000 (wikipedia). It means that the habañeros have to be diluted 200,000-fold before the capsaicin is completely diluted in the water or no longer detected in the chilis. Still confused? hehehe... don't worry I bet you are not alone in this case.

So according to Wikipedia (see the article about Scoville Scale for more detail), the hottest chili on the planet is Naga Jolokia, the chilis are cultivated in the region of Assam, India, (The scoville rating is about 1,000,000, approximately five times hotter than that of an habañero!) which picture is displayed above. What about Thai peppers (In Indonesia we call it 'cabai rawit' or in Malaysia it is dubbed as 'chili padi') ?? Well, a bit surprisingly, our Thai peppers are only rated at 100,000! which means 10 times milder than the Jolokias! Well, are you now interested in tasting that Jolokia?? Well I think you will have nothing to lose. At least eating too much Jolokia will help relieving your constipated bowels, and you will need no longer Vegeta to empty out your intestines... hehehehehe......

Ok folks. All for now.

(Written by: Yari NK)