The Naga Viper Pepper is a monster, the unholy offspring of three of the world’s hottest peppers, the Naga Morich Pepper, the Trinidad Scorpion Pepper, and the Bhut Jolokia, also known as the Ghost Pepper. Rated at 1,382,118 Scoville Heat Units, the Naga Viper was for a short time in 2011 ranked the hottest pepper in the world, 270 times hotter than a Jalapeno Pepper!
Origins
No mad scientist was responsible for this creation, though. The Naga Viper is the brain child of Gerald Fowler, a pub owner pepper farmer from Cumbria, England, who also runs the Chilli Pepper Company, selling hot sauce, pepper seeds, and chili powder.
Taste and Smell
The Naga Viper pepper is a little deceiving by the smell with a sweet, fruity, and almost tangy smell. Aside from the extreme heat, they have a very sweet fruity taste. The heat will slowly build as the fruitiness subsides and you’ll be left feeling like you’re melting.
Culinary Uses
What are you going to do with a pepper this hot? Eat it of course! As long as you’re prepared to sign a waver at Fowler’s pub declaring you are of sound body and mind, before you attempt to consume a Naga Viper – based curry, which burns all the way down and may incapacitate you for an hour.
Don’t worry; you’ll get over it. Gerald claims it’s a marvelous endorphin rush. And it’s good for you, like all peppers, the Naga Viper is loaded with Vitamin C, but to get the full effect, health effects, you will have to be brave enough to eat one of these things raw, because Vitamin C breaks down during cooking.
Other Uses
What else can be done with these dangerously spicy peppers? Well, military experts are devising some way to create a ‘spice bomb’. That’s right; the same thing you can eat can also be used as a grenade-like weapon that will choke enemy combatants and force them out of their lairs. For a time, the unfortunate target of the spice bomb will feel like their eyes, throat, and skin are on fire, but the intense pain will not produce any lasting effects.
Cultivation
Unfortunately for those looking to grow their own plants loaded with potential chemical weapon ammunition, you’re going to have to wait. The cross-breading technique used to produce them means that they are an unstable variety, and what seeds are produced by the ripe peppers will produce offspring with traits that are different from the parent plant. The Chilli Pepper Company is continuing to work on creating a stable Naga Viper.
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Photo Credit: nickdu
