The World's Hottest Chili Pepper: 1 Million SHUs

WSJ: It's 200 times hotter than the jalapeño. Workers handle it with goggles and face masks. And spicy-food lovers can't wait to get their hands on it.

The bhut jolokia pepper, which is farmed in the northeast part of India, was plucked from obscurity last year when the Guinness Book of World Records declared it the world's hottest. The standard measure for such things is the Scoville Heat Unit, or SHU, named after Wilbur Lincoln Scoville, a chemist who in 1912 developed a method of assessing the heat given off by capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers. Jalapeño peppers measure about 5,000 SHUs. The bhut jolokia tops a million.

Watch a video here of the WSJ writer trying to eat a bhut jolokia pepper.

Just another benefit of globalization and world trade!