FORT MILL, S.C. — Ed Currie holds one of his world-record Carolina Reaper peppers by the stem, which looks like the tail of a scorpion.
On the other end is the oily, fire-engine red fruit with a punch of heat nearly as potent as most pepper sprays used by police. Last month, The Guinness Book of World Records decided Currie’s peppers were the hottest on Earth.
The heat of a pepper is measured in Scoville Heat Units. A regular jalapeno pepper registers around 5,000 on the Scoville scale. Currie’s Carolina Reapers come in at 1,569,300 Scoville Heat Units, with an individual pepper measured at 2.2 million.
“I haven’t tried Ed’s peppers. I am afraid to,” said Cliff Calloway, the Winthrop University professor whose students tested Currie’s peppers. “I bite into a jalapeno — that’s too hot for me.”
