Ghost Pepper Scoville, About 1 Million SHU

On this page

1. 1How hot is a ghost pepper?
2. 2Why do ghost pepper numbers differ?
3. 3Where does the ghost pepper come from?
4. 4Why is it called the ghost pepper?
5. 5What does a ghost pepper taste like?
6. 6What colors do ghost peppers come in?
7. 7Is the ghost pepper a chinense or a hybrid?
8. 8What is the ghost pepper used for?
9. 9What does eating a ghost pepper feel like, and how long does it last?
10. 10Can a ghost pepper hurt you?
11. 11How do you handle and cook ghost peppers safely?
12. 12Which should you pick, a ghost, a habanero or a Reaper?
13. 13How does it compare, and can you grow it?

How hot is a ghost pepper?

A ghost pepper averages 1,001,304 Scoville heat units, the HPLC mean from a replicated field trial at Las Cruces, New Mexico, in 2005¹. That's barely over the 1,000,000 line, so it sits at the bottom of the super-hot band.

MildMediumHotExtra-hotSuper-hot

Habanero100,000–350,000 SHUGhost pepper1,001,304 SHU averageCarolina Reaper1,641,183 SHU averagePepper X2,693,000 SHU average

01K10K100K1M3M

MildMediumHotExtra-hotSuper-hot

Log scale; bars are published ranges.^{4 sources}Sources for this line1. HortScience 42(2):222-2242. University of Florida IFAS Extension5. PhytoKeys 200:1-423 (Pensoft)6. Guinness World Records

The fairest comparison you can make comes from that same trial. An orange habanero grown next to it measured 357,729 SHU, so the ghost pepper came out about 2.8 times hotter than a habanero from the same field and season. The working is 1,001,304 ÷ 357,729 = 2.80.

Why do ghost pepper numbers differ?

Because each figure comes from a different sample and a different kind of report. The 2005 trial even sent its own ground pods to two commercial labs, and they came back lower than the university's result¹.

Published ghost pepper figures and what kind of number each one is

Figure	Kind of figure
1,001,304 SHU	HPLC mean, 25 fruits from at least 10 plants per replication, Las Cruces 2005
927,199 SHU	Same ground sample, commercial lab (Southwest Bio-Laboratories)
879,953 SHU	Same ground sample, commercial lab (Ag-Biotech)
almost 1,020,000 SHU	Field-trial mean, NMSU superhot study, 2012
1,041,427 SHU	Single figure, given as the Guinness certification
about 1,000,000 SHU	Rounded figure

Which number should you trust?

Use the 1,001,304 mean for your own planning. It comes from a published, replicated trial that also grew a habanero as a control, so you can see how the two compare under the same sun. The others land within about 12 % of it, which is normal for chiles: two labs testing one ground sample still disagreed by 47,000 SHU.

Guinness's own 2013 article put the former Bhut Jolokia record at just over 800,000 SHU⁷, lower than all of these. Older and newer tests rarely match on a pepper this variable.

Where does the ghost pepper come from?

From Assam, in northeastern India¹. Farmers there grow several local landraces, and the names in use include Naga Jolokia, Bhut Jolokia and Bih Jolokia; in Assamese, jolokia simply means the chile pepper¹.

The seed that started the New Mexico trial reached the Chile Pepper Institute in 2001 from a member who collected it in India. Poor fruit and seed set meant it took until 2005 to have enough seed for a full trial¹.

AP Archive made this news clip of farmers in Assam picking Bhut Jolokia, so you can watch the plant and the pods in the field, but remember that its "India holds the world record" line is old, because the record has changed hands since.

Why is it called the ghost pepper?

"Ghost pepper" is the English rendering of Bhut Jolokia, one of its Assamese names. The New Mexico paper that measured it explains only the second word: jolokia means the Capsicum pepper in Assamese¹.

What bhut means is less settled. The popular story reads it as "ghost," and other writers tie it to Bhutan; we haven't found a primary source that decides between them, so we don't print either story as fact. What you can rely on is that Bhut Jolokia, Naga Jolokia and Bih Jolokia all name landraces from the same corner of northeastern India¹.

What does a ghost pepper taste like?

Smoky and fruity, with a little sweetness before the heat takes over. That's how the UC Master Gardeners of Ventura County describe it³, and it is the one flavor description we found on a primary source.

You get that flavor only in the first second or two. After that the heat covers almost everything, so most cooks use the ghost pepper in a sauce or a stew where a small amount spreads through a big pot and the fruit and smoke come through at a level you can taste.

• Smoky
• Fruity
• Sweet

What colors do ghost peppers come in?

UF/IFAS Extension lists the ghost pepper in red, yellow, orange and chocolate². In the index these share one entry, because no primary source we've read publishes separate heat figures for them.

Ghost pepper colors, with what a primary source says about each

Color	Also sold as	What we can source
Red	Bhut Jolokia, ghost pepper	The form tested in the 2005 trial: green ripening to bright red, 1,001,304 SHU mean
Yellow	Yellow Bhut Jolokia	Listed as a ghost pepper color by UF/IFAS; no separate heat figure
Orange	Orange Bhut Jolokia	Listed as a ghost pepper color by UF/IFAS; no separate heat figure
Chocolate	Chocolate Bhut Jolokia	Listed as a ghost pepper color by UF/IFAS; no separate heat figure
White	White Bhut Jolokia	No primary source found yet, so no data in this row

If you're choosing between colors at a seed shop, treat them all as about a million SHU until someone publishes a trial. Pick your color for looks and flavor; your burn will be about the same.

Is the ghost pepper a chinense or a hybrid?

Mostly Capsicum chinense, with a little C. frutescens mixed in. The flower and pod traits put it in C. chinense, and DNA markers confirmed that, but they also turned up three markers found only in C. frutescens, a sign of gene flow from that species¹.

1Two hanging flowers per node, creamy white¹2Purple filaments, blue anthers¹3The C. chinense ring at the cap, present but reduced¹4Pods 5–8 cm, rippled surface, green to bright red¹

1. Two hanging flowers per node, creamy white¹
2. Purple filaments, blue anthers¹
3. The C. chinense ring at the cap, present but reduced¹
4. Pods 5–8 cm, rippled surface, green to bright red¹

An earlier Indian report had called the Naga Jolokia a C. frutescens. The New Mexico team matched that report's fruit description to their own plants and placed it in C. chinense instead¹.

What is the ghost pepper used for?

UF/IFAS Extension lists three uses²:

• An ingredient in spicy food, used fresh or dried
• A remedy for summer heat in some countries
• Dried powder developed into pepper spray for self-defense

At this heat, a little goes a long way in a pot. University of Maryland Extension's advice to wear rubber gloves when you process chiles or clean out seeds applies twice over here⁹.

What does eating a ghost pepper feel like, and how long does it last?

It feels like a burn because, to your nerves, it is one. Capsaicin switches on the same receptor on your sensory nerves that fires when something touches you at a painfully high temperature, so your brain reads a chemical as heat¹⁰.

1. You bite the podCapsaicin leaves the white ribs and coats your mouth
2. Capsaicin opens the heat receptorThe same channel that fires at painful temperatures
3. Pain nerves fireThey carry the signal they use for real heat
4. Your brain reads it as a burnSweat, tears and a red face follow
5. a large dose
   Too much reaches the stomachNausea, vomiting, cramps or diarrhea

¹⁰¹¹

No study we found times the burn of a whole ghost pepper, so treat any minute-by-minute claim you read with care. The one timed lab study we can point you to used a far milder spicy tomato juice, and it shows the shape of the curve¹²:

1. 0 seconds

   The burn starts as you swallow

   In the Penn State study, 72 people rated a spicy tomato juice between moderate and strong right after swallowing.¹²

2. 10 seconds to 2 minutes

   It fades, even with nothing to drink

   The ratings dropped every 10 seconds, to just above weak by the two-minute mark.¹²

3. After a large dose

   The stomach takes over

   Poison Control lists nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhea after too much hot pepper, so the trouble can start well after your mouth calms down.¹¹

A ghost pepper starts far higher on that curve than a tomato juice, so expect your mouth to take much longer than two minutes to settle.

Can a ghost pepper hurt you?

In normal cooking amounts, the record shows discomfort rather than harm. The best-known exception is a 2016 case report: a 47-year-old man ate ghost peppers in a contest, retched and vomited violently, and tore a 2.5 cm hole in his esophagus¹³. He spent 23 days in hospital. The authors wrote that, as far as they knew, no serious harm from eating ghost peppers had been reported before¹³.

The tear came from the force of the vomiting, a condition doctors call Boerhaave syndrome. That's the reason eating contests worry emergency doctors more than a ghost pepper sauce on your tacos.

How do you handle and cook ghost peppers safely?

Treat a ghost pepper like a kitchen chemical for the ten minutes you cut it. Most of the trouble people report comes from their hands and eyes, not from the plate.

If your mouth is on fire, reach for milk. In the Penn State study every drink helped a little, but whole milk, skim milk and a sweetened fruit drink cut the burn the most, and skim worked about as well as whole¹². Keep a glass of cold milk on your table before the first bite, not after.

Skip the beer. The same study found fizzy drinks among the weaker choices, and seltzer was one of them¹².

Which should you pick, a ghost, a habanero or a Reaper?

Pick by how much heat your dish can carry, and remember that each step up this ladder multiplies the burn by about 1.6 to 2.8. The trial numbers make the gaps concrete¹⁶.

Which super-hot to buy for what you are cooking

If you want	Pick	Why
Fruit you can taste in a salsa, with strong heat	Habanero	357,729 SHU trial mean, about a third of the ghost 1
A smoky heat that spreads through a big pot of curry or chili	Ghost pepper	1,001,304 SHU trial mean, flavor holds when you use a little 13
The most heat per drop for a sauce you share by the drop	Carolina Reaper	about 1.64 times the ghost's trial mean 6

For most home cooks the ghost pepper is the top of the useful range. Past it, the extra heat costs you more flavor than it adds.

How does it compare, and can you grow it?

Against the habanero, the trial gap of about 2.8 times is the headline; the ghost pepper and habanero side by side adds flavor and use for your next shopping trip.

The Carolina Reaper averages about 1.64 times the ghost's trial mean⁶, and the Reaper against the ghost lines the two up.

If you're weighing it against a naga from the same corner of India, the Naga Morich comparison puts the two side by side.

Growing one takes patience: the original seed at NMSU set fruit and seed so poorly that it took several seasons to bulk up¹. The trial itself gives you a workable recipe: seedlings in a greenhouse at 27°C by day and 18°C by night, moved outdoors at 8 to 10 true leaves, and spaced 25 cm apart in rows 1 m wide¹. If you want pure seed to save, the team grew its plants under insect-proof net cages, which keep insects from bringing in pollen from other peppers. The ghost pepper growing guide covers the season, and if you'd rather buy it bottled, the ghost pepper hot sauces list starts there.