. . . (unless, of course, the label’s missing). Last Saturday I taught class in the morning, Marlana and I donated blood in the afternoon, and then we got a lot of chores done around the house, so around 10:00 we decided that chili mac sounded good for dinner. I had gotten a chili plant a few weeks ago from a local nursary, but it didn’t have a tag telling what it was. The fruit are very pretty; I thought that it was a Scotch bonnet, and Marlana concurred. There was one large, ripe pepper on the plant, so I chopped it up and added it to a can of chili (for me, an unimproved can for Marlana). Whilst the pasta was cooking and the chili heating, Marlana poked around on the internet and finally found a picture that looked exactly like my pepper. A Naga Viper. 1.3 million on the Scoville scale. (Roughly the equivalent of 4 - 5 large habaneros.) A bit much . . . it turns out . . . for one can of chili. Tasty, but a bit much.
…assuming the water content of the fresh naga viper is identical to that of a habanero, since the scoville unit is typically defined as the heat sensitivity reported by test subjects per unit of dry mass in a solution.
I tried to get a Carolina Reaper but they were sold out; I’ll have to check earlier next year. However, a gentleman I know from a local deli has one; we’re going to have a salsa contest in September.