So after 1.5 years of growing my ghost chili plant has finally started producing peppers. The first pepper is fully ripe as of this morning. Anyone have any good ideas on what I can make with this thing?

I am a man that likes spicy food but I'm pretty sure that no amount of spicy food training will prepare me for a ghost chili. It will still be fun to see just how hot it is though. Anyone have any good recipes for salsa/hot sauce/chili/whatever that this would be good in?

6/25/2012 11:34:00 AM

One of my roommates made ghost pepper salsa this past weekend. I'll ask him to post the recipe up here. It was pretty damn hot, but not overpowering.

6/25/2012 11:37:24 AM

just sub it in for another hot pepper in one of your other recipes, but tone it the hell down in volume.

Also, buy some sanitary wipes with aloe.

6/25/2012 11:39:02 AM

I realize this is the Lounge. But I felt this was very relevant.

6/25/2012 12:21:29 PM

lolling so hard right now, 10/10 Bobby Light

6/25/2012 12:32:54 PM

Just remember to treat the pepper like the weapon that it is.

6/25/2012 12:42:28 PM

wear gloves

6/25/2012 1:32:16 PM

There was only one pepper in the salsa, and it didn't cause any rectal retribution. Individual results may vary.

6/25/2012 2:18:39 PM

Wash carefully after prep/cutting. Then wash again, and maybe again before your hand comes into contact with any mucous membrane (eyes, etc.)

Otherwise, I like 'em.

6/25/2012 2:52:17 PM

Quote :

"lolling so hard right now, 10/10 Bobby Light"

6/25/2012 3:02:17 PM

So JK, would you say that with one ghost chili it was some of the hottest you've tried?

6/25/2012 4:16:03 PM

you may want to use latex gloves when prepping that chili. that shit can burn your skin there's so much capsicum in it. have you ever eaten a habernero? ghost chilis held the Guiness record from 2007-2011. they have between 855,000 - 1,041,427 scoville units (208x a jalapeno) whereas haberneros have 350,000 - 577,000 scoville units.

It it's probably at least twice as hot as a habernero and after eating just one habernero I wasn't shitting right for a couple of days and the heat in my mouth at the time was borderline painful. If I didn't have all the milk/bread/beer available to me it would have been much worse.

That being said, have fun and let us know how it goes.

6/25/2012 4:35:03 PM

I definitely will be wearing gloves and goggles when cutting open the ghost peppers and handling them. I have no trouble with habaneros though, I usually use habanero hot sauce when I want to make something spicy and I'm just barely able to handle it. I've got about 5 or 6 tiny peppers growing on the plant that should be good in a few weeks so I'll maybe make some salsa with them or dry some out to use in chili when winter rolls around.

6/25/2012 5:31:25 PM

I can eat that habanero sauce by the tablespoons, no water

[Edited on June 25, 2012 at 6:11 PM. Reason : pref with food]

[Edited on June 25, 2012 at 6:11 PM. Reason : i'm awesome]

6/25/2012 6:06:33 PM

I tried growing these from seeds I bought on eBay. I harvested maybe 15 peppers but they were only around the scoville of a moderate habanero. I guess either the seeds I got weren't ghost pepper seeds or miracle grow doesn't produce hot peppers. Do you have pics of the peppers? How did you prep the soil?

6/25/2012 8:31:06 PM

As I understand it, you have to manage the temperature, humidity, soil moisture, and soil pH to maximize the hotness of peppers. It's supposed to take fairly careful management to make weapons grade ghost peppers.

6/25/2012 9:56:30 PM

eating habernero sauce =/= eating a raw or smoked habernero

a teaspoon of the sauce with no water is very doable. eat a whole habernero pepper and you'll be hurting

6/25/2012 10:51:02 PM

I've eaten a few habaneros in one sitting and not had any problems; didn't even think the heat was all that bad either. I love hot things though, and habaneros have a different kind of heat from chili peppers and halepenos.

6/25/2012 11:03:40 PM

Quote :

"As I understand it, you have to manage the temperature, humidity, soil moisture, and soil pH to maximize the hotness of peppers. It's supposed to take fairly careful management to make weapons grade ghost peppers. "

This is really true of any type of pepper, in my experience. My wife and I grow jalapenos, habaneros, and banana peppers every year. Some years the jalapenos are hotter than the habaneros, and sometimes even the banana peppers are super hot. We just got our first ripe habaneros of the year and I can just eat them whole. Keeps it interesting.

[Edited on June 25, 2012 at 11:15 PM. Reason : d]

6/25/2012 11:14:35 PM

I'll be honest, I was underwhelmed. A variety of factors may have affected the strength of the peppers. Overall it was a good salsa though, pretty damn hot, but not too hot.

6/25/2012 11:23:16 PM

Obligatory.....

TRINIDAD

SCORPION



ok, and please to wear gloves.

6/26/2012 7:39:11 AM

I made some hot sauce based off of this recipe yesterday:

http://marxfood.com/ghost-chili-hot-sauce-recipe/

except instead of using aji panca (never even heard of them) I used habaneros. Although the hot sauce is pretty hot, I've had way hotter before. I think I used too much vinegar. Version 2.0 will feature twice as many ghost chilies and half as much vinegar. The hot sauce actually ended up being very tasty though so I'm pleased with the outcome for now.

As a side note, when cutting the ghost chili I ate a small bite (about the size of a grain of rice) out of curiosity and it was one of the hottest things I have ever tasted. Three hours after eating it, my lips were still burning. Also, even though I used gloves while cutting, a little bit of the juice got under my fingernail while cleaning the cutting board and my finger is still stinging from it.

It was the first pepper the plant produced but there are quite a few tiny ones that are the size of peas. When they are ripe I'll post some pictures. I don't have a picture of the one I used last night, but this is exactly what it looked like:



I got the seeds originally from ThinkGeek. I kept the plant inside on the windowsill for about a year. Once it got too big for it's original container, I moved it to a much larger container and used standard Miracle Grow. It's been outside since the beginning of May and gets about 8-10 hours of direct sunlight a day. I usually water it once a day depending on rainfall and how healthy the leaves look.

6/26/2012 1:14:26 PM

Did you just taste it yesterday after you made it? Hot sauces often develop a bit after you make them and end up significantly hotter the next day.

6/26/2012 2:05:36 PM

After letting it sit in the fridge for a day it is quite a bit hotter but still not as hot as I would like it.

6/27/2012 9:29:53 AM

I do not know why i didn't think about this yesterday.

Make hot wings.

6/27/2012 9:44:31 AM

^Good call. I'll definitely do that once I get some more peppers!

6/27/2012 11:18:44 AM

It occurred to me after trying to kill my taste buds on our team wing night last night.

6/27/2012 12:11:54 PM

Quote :

"lolling so hard right now, 10/10 Bobby Light"

6/29/2012 8:47:34 AM

threw a whole chicken in the crock pot for 8 hours, with one ghost chili.

Chicken came out great, just the right amount of heat.

But then I threw a half bag of brown rice into the leftover juices. Tastes great but my mouth is on fire right now. I hope my colon will forgive me.


I'm legitimately afraid to go to the bathroom after eating a serving of that rice.

[Edited on July 15, 2012 at 11:15 PM. Reason : .]

7/15/2012 11:10:08 PM

7/17/2012 9:12:27 AM

Quote :

"I'm legitimately afraid to go to the bathroom after eating a serving of that rice. "

Buy these

7/17/2012 12:03:37 PM

So it appears that the ghost chili plant is extremely sensitive to temperature. After the initial pepper that grew there were about 6 baby ones on the way but they all shriveled up and fell off before getting big. I couldn't figure out what the problem was but after researching online I found that contrary to what most people think, the hotter the better isn't necessarily correct when it comes to peppers. We've getting mid day temperatures here (Huntsville, AL) of about 97-100 degrees here and despite making sure it had plenty of water, the plant produced nothing but flowers for the past 2 months. Now that temperatures have been been around 80-90 in the middle of the day for the past two weeks or so, I'm pleased to report 5 new peppers growing on the plant.

I'll be making something super spicy once they are ready.

8/19/2012 8:25:32 PM

^^i'll bet those feel heavenly

8/19/2012 9:30:49 PM

My two plants have been producing solid peppers for 4-5 weeks now. I freeze my extra peppers and I'll dehydrate them at the end of the season to make hotter-than-hell chili powder.

I made some ghost chili salsa this weekend and shit turned out great. After chopping up the ghost chilies I added one teaspoon at a time until i felt the salsa was hot enough. It's tough to judge because boiling salsa makes it hard to judge spiciness.

Two things I learned this weekend:
1. The oils will burn if they somehow get in contact w/ your skin - even after I washed my hands. The right side of my face was on fire for about 20 minutes after I rubbed my cheek.
2. Dogs hate it when you touch their nose w/ a hot pepper. Shit had me rolling all afternoon

8/20/2012 9:57:27 AM

^^we bought flushable wipes for our kids when they were potty training and just kept buying them for us.

^yeah, animal cruelty is hilarious.

[Edited on August 20, 2012 at 10:05 AM. Reason : .]

8/20/2012 10:03:48 AM

^^ what a fucked up thing to do. I hope someone jams one up your nose.

8/20/2012 11:54:54 AM

i feel like a dog's nose would be more sensitive than ours. you should touch the ghost chili to your dick hole, you dick hole

8/20/2012 1:39:30 PM

Jeez that is kind of a messed up thing to do to your dog. When I was chopping up one I had to breathe through my mouth because the fumes alone were causing physical pain in my nose -- I can't imagine how much that would hurt a dog. My dog didn't even wanna come near me last time I chopped up a ghost chili.

8/20/2012 1:46:43 PM

Animal cruelty? Come the fuck on. Chili pepper powders are used as a natural household deterrent.

He was the one that was interested in what I had in my hand... it wasn't like I forced it on him.

8/21/2012 12:15:44 AM

Typically a deterrent works because an animal can smell it from a distance and know to stay away from it.

Also,

Quote :

"Dogs hate it when you touch their nose w/ a hot pepper. "

Quote :

"it wasn't like I forced it on him."

8/21/2012 8:59:48 AM

honestly? Even if I ignored the part where you admitted how they burn on contact, using a "deterrent" just for the hell of it is the cruelty part.

8/21/2012 9:02:47 AM

http://www.animallaw.info/statutes/stusnc14_360_363_2.htm#s360

So, "torture?" Is that what you are describing here? I'm sure my dog liking his nose for 10 seconds correlates to the "pain, suffering, or death" that this article refers to. Yup, matches the description exactly. Get real, folks. My dog was interested in what I was doing, came up to me on his own free will, sniffed my hand, and got a nose/tongue full of pepper. Where did I say that I held the dog down and forced it on him?

And I'm sure that picking up my dog by his back legs and "wheelbarrowing" him around the house is "mutilating" his back and causes "pain, suffering and death." Take out your aggression out on our next-door neighbor who ties up his dog to the tree and leaves him out there all day.

In the meantime, I'll continue to cook hot salsa and gracefully offer a sniff to any dog that's interested in what I'm doing.

8/21/2012 12:33:41 PM

Quote :

"Where did I say that I held the dog down and forced it on him?"

you were doing it for your own personal amusement. hence why people think you're cruel/fucked up.

8/21/2012 3:34:38 PM

a jalapeno or something is one thing

pressing a bhut jolokia pepper on a dog's nose is kinda fucked up though

8/21/2012 3:43:04 PM

moving on...

i should be harvesting some pretty soon

8/21/2012 4:27:14 PM

There's a difference between this:

Quote :

" Dogs hate it when you touch their nose w/ a hot pepper. "

and this:

Quote :

"My dog was interested in what I was doing, came up to me on his own free will, sniffed my hand, and got a nose/tongue full of pepper."

What sounds like really happened is your dog came up interested and you bopped him on the nose with a hot pepper.

In my book that's definitely cruelty to the animal. You knew how hot it would be and how it would be painful for the dog, but you did it anyways. The dog didn't know any better and you took advantage of its ignorance.

You are an asshole and should be reminded of it every chance you get.

8/22/2012 6:23:49 AM

Dog guy is an asshole. I hope his dog shoves a ghost chili up his ass when he's asleep.



So I took one whole ghost chili, one half of one, one whole jalapeño and grounded them finely. Mixed in 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar and about 1/2 cup water haven't tasted it yet but I took a wiff and I can smell my nose hairs burning lol

8/22/2012 7:34:49 PM

try adding honey to that mixture.

8/22/2012 7:49:04 PM

Chili's still alive. It's Left Eye who's dead.

8/22/2012 7:52:21 PM

ha, i knew that guy would meet the wrath of tww after admitting to doing that to the dog

8/22/2012 8:09:49 PM