The Scorpion Challenge

I should have known better, I suppose, than to buy my father some of the world's hottest chili peppers in powdered form and think I could get away unharmed.  My father has a long history of liking overly spicy food (though he seems to be recanting this somewhat in recent years) so for his birthday, my sister and I got him powdered ghost pepper and scorpion pepper.  So naturally, we had to eat it.

Let me introduce you to the Scoville scale.  You see, we measure the "heat" or "burn" of spicy food in something called Scoville Heat Units (SHUs for short).  Here is a chart showing the SHU rating of some common peppers and spices.

Now let's add the ghost and scorpion pepper to the chart and see what happens...

ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE WORSE THAN HABANERO!!!!!!

We decided the best way to handle this would be with chili.  This way we could use a tiny pinch and hope the chili would act as insulation against the ridiculous heat.  This is the recipe we used and it was quite tasty.  I recommend giving it a try.  As a control, we made the recipe without adding any ghosts or scorpions then added the fiery madness to each bowl.  Fortunately, when dried and turned into powder, the SHUs drop to a mere 450,000 and 500,000, respectively.  Because that's so very manageable, right?

...so we made some videos of me eating this stuff...

Amazingly, I survived the ghost pepper experience without much pain.  I used maybe an eighth of a teaspoon in my bowl and, while I did break a sweat from the heat, I wasn't about to do my Madeline Kahn impression.

I felt empowered.  Perhaps I had more heat tolerance than I thought.  Maybe...  MAYBE NOTHING COULD STOP ME!!!!  With one pepper defeated, I confidently moved on to the scorpion pepper.

This...  was a mistake.  That extra 50,000 SHU is a lot.  It stings.  A lot.  HOLY HECK does it hurt!!!  But I was determined.  I felt a need to conquer.  To overcome.  I would not tap out to the vicious scorpion no matter how bad the pain got, but the more I ate, the worse it was.  I felt my lower lip swell and I thought I should stop, but looking at the bowl I only had about 4 bites left.  As my father cringed, I shoveled it into my face and powered through the last of it.

Just how bad is it?  Well, let's put it this way.  The steam from washing the bowls out in the sink made my father's eyes water.  It was that bad.  Even at just one eighth of a teaspoon it was still amazingly potent.  We decided that we're going to let it sit on the shelf for a few years and maybe by then it will have reached its half life and the burn won't be as bad.

So what did we learn from all this?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

Whatever, at least I finished it.