'Pepper X' Creator Ed Currie Answers Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

I'm Ed Curry and I grow the hottest peppers in the world let's answer some questions from the internet this is pepper [Music] support at Dustin diki asks Peppers why do you hurt me Peppers don't actually hurt you it's the capsacin that's in the pepper that is reacting with a trvp1 receptor that only mammals have to send a signal to your brain that we perceive as heat it's just a brain trick to tell you not to eat the fruit there is no actual heat it will not hurt you at box Vergo asks did you know Birds can't taste capsacin yes I did know that only mammals can taste capsacin they're the only ones with the trvp1 receptor that sends the signal to the brain at the Jake de asks what kind of peppers do they use to make pepper spray the military uses jalapenos because they're so damn cheap but they use a lot of them to extract the capsacin there is a company that makes bear spray that uses Carolina Reaper it costs a lot more and it's a lot more potent on the end product at atha asks quick question why does drinking milk help with spicy food I hate to tell you but drinking milk does not help with spicy food what they're doing is coating all the membrane inside your mouth therefore shutting off the reaction with the trvp1 receptor but saliva eats through carbohydrates really fast all a sudden you're hot again and you drink more milk so you wind up drinking a half gallon of milk and then you throw up all over the place and then you say oh that Pepper made me throw up no it didn't it was the half gallon of milk you drank don't drink milk drink citric acid it's just a matter of time before it's going to go away at tus B asks how can I reduce the heat of the peppers in my hands I have washed it tce with deter so what causes the heat on your hands is the oil that the capin in it's called oo resin and that gets into all the grooves in your hand if you use hot water what you're doing is opening up all the pores in your skin and letting that oil go in which is just going to make it last a whole lot longer start with cold water citric acid like lemon juice or lime juice will also cut that oil makes it go away a lot faster at pcore nettling ass I have have no idea what the health benefits for various raw hot peppers but I've been eating them near daily for a month now and I feel great that's awesome I eat peppers on a daily basis too and I always feel great health benefits one because of the heat that we perceive the body releases dopamine and endorphin into your system that calms your nerves and makes you feel good and gives you kind of euphoric feeling like a runner's high peppers are really really high in vitamin C and vitamin A they raise your metabolism they help with digestion people think Peppers will give you an ulcer no they kill the bacteria that gives you ulcer at Megan Murray asks why are pepper seeds so much hotter than Peppers # nonsense well at Megan Murphy that is #n what it is that's hot is the membrane that the seeds are attached to this white membrane in here that the seeds are attached to that is what is producing the Heat if you took the seeds and washed them in hydrogen peroxide and then ate one there'd be no heat at all because you've taken the oil off that seed you just got to watch out for this membrane that's inside now in a super hot pepper that membrane goes all the way around the fruit but in something like a jalapeno it's in very defined ribs the skin on a jalapeno only has about a third of the Scoville uh that the membrane has at Joe 6884 649 90 anyone tell me what is the hottest pepper in the world well the hottest pepper in the world used to be smoking EDS Carolina Reaper at 1.64 2 million Scoville heat units this is pepper X which is now the new Guinness World Record for the hottest pepper in the world at 2693 million Scoville heat units over a million hotter than the Carolina Reaper which was my record for 10 years at Jill Rosenthal ask what is a Scoville well a Scoville might refer to wilver Scoville who is the invent of the scale known as the Scoville heat units a high performance liquid chromatograph was invented and that measures all the compounds in a whole bunch of different things including Peppers this bell pepper has absolutely no skillville heat units jalapeno which is about 3,000 Scoville heat units a Hungarian hot pepper which can go up to about 10,000 Scoville heat units Fresno maybe 20,000 habenero this about 100,000 Scoville heat units the chocolate botlo which is about 1.4 million Scoville heat units Carolina Reaper 1. 642 million Scoville heat units and a gnarly pepper x 2.69 3 million Scoville heat units at Alex Zealand asks tonight's dinner conversation how exactly do you breed hotter and hotter Peppers well Alex you need to have two pepper plants and those two plants have to have the right compounds in them that you're looking for these aren't pepper plants but this is the way that you crossbreed any of the plants you want to try crossbreeding you take a fine paintbrush and you go to the first flower and you roll that paintbrush around in the flower and then you go to a flower on a different plant and try to transfer the pollen as the bud turns into a pepper and the fruit starts growing hey is this the fruit that I really want does it taste like I want you take the seeds out and you replant that if that grows the same exact fruit then you've got the first generation of your cross breed the time span between crossing a pepper and achieving stability is 8 to 12 generations for us we can do that in 6 Years cuz we have green houses but if you're doing it at home it's going to take you 10 years at least uh to get a stable plant at Stone shed crafts ass can I save seeds from inside Peppers dry them and use them to grow pepper plants in the spring how about chilies too pepper plants and chili plants are all the same family okay so you can do that I do that that's how I get all of my seeds we take each and every seed out of a pepper plant and then you know I save from every single pepper a few seeds for the future I have about 7800 different kinds of peppers that I've saved seeds from it's a long process when you're doing it I recommend wearing gloves but you can just pull the ribs out let them dry separate the pepper seeds I wash them in a little bit of hydrogen peroxide and water and it takes the heat off at AKA Cinders ass I have the hardest time with peppers I can't seem to get them to grow no matter what I do I haven't hit the right conditions yet what happens most of the time when people fail with pepper plants is they're trying too hard peppers are a weed if you have Sun you have dirt and you have water you have the right conditions and the plant will tell you when it needs water anytime you see that plant start to wilt give it a little more moisture it'll stand right back up again now the first mistake most people make is they plant the seed too deep birds eat the seeds they transport them they poop them out and then a pepper grows they're taking a poop and flying away that's how deep you need to put that pepper seed an eighth of an inch at W6 oy asks how does the Scoville scale measure the exact hotness of peppers it's a chemical process first what we do is dehydrate peppers for approximately 96 hours then we emulsify them and boil them a small sample is taken out and put into a machine called high performance liquid chromatograph is commonly referred to as the hplc and that machine gives us a graft and that graft has Peaks where all the different compounds are and we know these Peaks are capsacin dihydro capsacin and nordal hydroc capsacin the area of those Peaks is then put into a chemical equation from the American Association of analytical chemists and that gives you the exact Scoville heat units of that pepper sample at Charlie marks as when are pepper breeders going to stop when is too many scoville units too many right now we have Peppers that are 2.6 million or higher theoretically if the models are correct we can get that up to about 7.9 million but it's going to take a lot of time at DOI yanga ask yeah so how do you make hot sauce first ingredient has got to be Peppers either in a pepper Mash form or fresh Peppers you take fresh Peppers that have been dest stemmed with a little bit of vinegar you only need somewhere between 8 and 14% of the volume in vinegar and then you heat that up and you get it to a boil and then you can it and that is fresh pepper mesh and then you need a little bit of vinegar to acidify it a little bit more we're going to guesstimate about one cup next ingredient people like salt it's about a teaspoon that's all you need I'm going to put in a little bit of onion powder and a little bit of garlic powder garlic gives a little bit of body in there and all that goodness and flavor black pepper is a spice it is not a pepper and what I like to do if you have it at home you take a little bit of turmeric is it livens up the taste first you have to mix it up and then you put it on the stove and you heat it up to a minimum of 185° after that is done you can put it in a container and put it in the refrigerator hot sauce by law right now has a 2-year shelf life but science that has to do with that pH says it's good for 8 to 10 years no issues at all at keson asks everyone what is your strategy on how to win a hot pepper eating contest starting to think I might be in over my head you're going to need to do hotter and hotter Peppers start with jalapenos then maybe go to Fresnos if you're daring you might just up to a habanero and you eat those then you look for a ghost pepper and you eat those so the next question comes from Andy doodle 56 I just been into a Carolina Reaper it hurts so good but WTF what's happening to my body so Andy I think the best way to explain what is happening to your body is to bring in a victim Bella is going to eat this Reaper so the first thing that happens when she bites into the pepper you get the sweet taste but then the heat hits and immediately from the back of your throat all the way through your mouth there's an explosion just like lava those trvp1 receptors are shooting signals to your brain and you're going to have a fight response or you're going to have a flight response now when you have the fight response you kind of look like she does her body is starting to sweat it's getting into her blood system so she might or might not feel a little like her arms feeling a little bit lighter or different parts of her body tingling what your body starts doing is pumping dopamine and endorphin into your system kind of akin to a narcotic and it's going to give you a runers high when you are hot your body starts sweating it's trying to cool you down how do you feel like I feel floaty my throat and my tongue absolutely feel searing pain um I'm having a hard time concentrating like I heard maybe five words you said and it feels like my throat is wanting to close and it's on fire it almost feels uh very puffy right here and that's a precursor to Capas and cramps if you're feeling that way just get on out of here Heather all right you got it I wouldn't recommend anybody doing a whole pepper the best way to do it is to cut it into little slices and just taste it at I exude sarcasm ass when people eat that is made with raw ghost peppers and all those spicier peppers do they lose a bit of the lining in their colon if it doesn't cause ulcers or anything like that but what does happen is that massive amount of capace and your body is perceiving as a poison your stomach exrs it into the smooth muscle and you get a cramp and that cramp can be very very painful and they come in waves guys think they're dying but they're not dying they're just having a menstrual cramp and they don't know what it feels like and as the pepper makes its way through your intestinal tract it's going to catch up with your in in Uranus so you might experience The Burning Ring of Fire at baby Wasteland asks has anyone ever died from eating an extremely hot pepper to my knowledge and through all the research we've done there has been no record of anybody dying from eating an extremely hot pepper the only real concern you need to have do you have an allergy to night shades CU peppers are in the nightshade family most people know that because they've been given Tomatoes when they were young do do you have a pre-existing heart condition that can't handle the elevation in metabolism and do you have an aneurysm anywhere that's been diagnosed other than that there's really nothing to fear from Peppers at Nixie and Saint ask you ever think about how different Wasabi hotness is to hot pepper hotness most Americans have not had Wasabi what they've had is horseradish that's been dyed horseradish does not have ksin in it the burn is from a different compound that we also perceive as heat we do a Wasabi mustard with Reaper Peppers that is amazing the lingering burn from the horseradish family that happens on the side of your mouth and in your nasal combined with the burn from super hot peppers that goes brutally down your tongue and into your throat gives me an endorphin rush like nothing else at Austin till ask guys what do you think the next hottest pepper is going to be yeah I think the next hottest pepper is going to be pepper why because I developed it I know the genealogy I know the stability and I know the testing I have not heard of anybody out in the pepper Community who actually has a stable pepper that can even beat pepper X so when I'm ready to release pepper y that will be released thank you for all the questions today folks it's been an honor to be here thanks for watching pepper [Music] support

Channel: WIRED

Views: 270,846

Keywords: carolina reaper, carolina reaper pepper, chili pepper, eating peppers, ed currie, ed currie hot peppers, ed currie interview, ed currie pepper x, hot pepper, hot peppers, hot sauce, hottest hot sauce, hottest pepper, hottest peppers, hottest peppers in the world, pepper, pepper 101, pepper expert, pepper questions, pepper spray, pepper support, pepper x, peppers, peppers 101, puckerbutt, wired, wired tech support, world hottest pepper, world's hottest peppers

Id: eXmVq8x1Lqk

Length: 15min 29sec (929 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2023