It's Not That Hot

Trust me.

To understand what you're about to see, you need to understand Fred.

Fred Smith is our compliance officer.  Fire systems, hazardous waste storage, first aid kits, that's Fred.  Fred also has an interesting hobby obsession:  Capsaicin

Fred's Rare Hot Sauce Collection

Capsaicin is the spice in spicy, the hot in hot sauce, and the pain in peppers.  In addition to collecting rare sauces, Fred grows these angry peppers at home.  He also orders specialty plants for the other crazy spice lovers here at Salem Harbor.  Common deliveries are the jalepenio, habernero, and his favorite, the orange ghost pepper, which was, until recently, the hottest pepper in the world.

Fred makes a mash of his home-grown peppers to add to various dips and sauces (he's "Fixing It", you see).  Each batch is advertised to a closed group using phrases like, "It's not that hot" and "Trust me, you'll love it."  I usually last about 7 chips.

This day, he made a Spanish rice, using one of the current capsaicin leaders:  The Trinidad Scorpion Pepper.  About the size of a gumball, this pepper has been bred to contain up to 1.4 million scoville units.  To put that in perspective, a thai pepper has up to 100,000 S.U..  Cayenne pepper only goes up to 50,000.  Pepperoncini is a meager 500 S.U.  This is 1,400,000 S.U. of pure disaster.

And I was going to eat it. Well, a highly diluted form of it, anyway.

As a general rule, I do not eat spicy things.  I avoid anything on a menu containing curry or has a little chili stamp in the margin. A year ago, I certainly didn't know anything about Scoville Units or hot sauces or the numerous methods of decon required after touching these things.  But I was learning... and besides.  This was FRED.  How could I say no?  24 hours later, I can still feel it.

Enjoy.  :)