Ghost pepper

• bhut jolokiaভূত জলকীয়া

  Assamese — Assam

  Usually rendered "ghost pepper" in English. Whether bhut means ghost or refers to the Bhutia people is genuinely disputed, and the English name has fixed one reading of it.

• naga morich

  Bengali — Bangladesh and West Bengal

  Sold as a distinct variety and closely related rather than identical; the two names are used interchangeably in export trade and not by growers.

• u-morok

  Manipuri — Manipur

Sweet and fruity for a second or two, and then overwhelming. The delay is the defining characteristic: the heat builds for twenty to thirty seconds before peaking, which is long enough for an inexperienced taster to conclude it is manageable and take more. It then persists for many minutes and cannot be rushed.

Distinctly fruity and floral, close to habanero and apricot-like, with very little of the green vegetal note that milder chillies carry. The aroma is genuinely pleasant and is the reason the pepper is worth using at all rather than simply enduring.

Bright red to orange when ripe, with a characteristically rough, dimpled, thin skin. Dried fruit darkens to a deep brick red.

Thin-walled and wrinkled, drying readily. It does not have the flesh to be stuffed or roasted like a thick-walled chilli.

• Capsaicin — The heat, at concentrations roughly two orders of magnitude above a jalapeño.
• Esters and terpenes — The fruity, apricot-like aroma shared with habanero, and the reason a very small quantity contributes flavour rather than only burn.

Gloves, ventilation, and a whole pepper you can take out again. Ghost pepper is used in fractions: a sliver of one fresh pepper, or a whole one pierced and simmered in a pot and lifted out before serving, which is how it is cooked where it grows. The delay is the thing to respect — the heat takes twenty to thirty seconds to arrive, so tasting and immediately adding more is how people get it badly wrong. Do not grind it in an enclosed kitchen: capsaicin at this concentration becomes an airborne irritant and the result is unpleasant for everyone in the building. Wash hands, board and knife with detergent rather than water alone, since capsaicin is fat-soluble and water simply moves it around. And if it does go too far, fat and dairy help and water does not, for the same reason.

In north-east India, ordinary cooking: curries, dal, chutneys, pickles and dried-fish dishes, and with pork in Naga cooking. Elsewhere, almost exclusively hot sauces and snack seasoning. It works with pork, chicken, fish, tomato, mango, lime and coconut, and it belongs with sweet and sour things — the fruity aroma pairs with tropical fruit and citrus far better than its reputation suggests, and a very small quantity in a mango chutney contributes flavour as well as heat.

• grinding — Releases capsaicin as an airborne irritant in quantity. Grinding dried ghost pepper in an enclosed space is genuinely unpleasant and effectively makes pepper spray; it wants ventilation and eye protection, which is not a joke about a chilli but a description of what capsaicin at this concentration does.
• infusing — The most controllable way to use it. A whole pepper pierced and simmered in a curry or a pot of dal, then removed, gives the fruit note and a manageable fraction of the heat, and is the traditional Assamese approach rather than a compromise.
• frying — Capsaicin is fat-soluble, so frying disperses it thoroughly through a dish and makes the heat much more even and much harder to avoid. This is the opposite of what most cooks want from a superhot.

Smell it. A good dried pepper or powder smells fruity and sweet under the pungency; an old one smells dusty. There is no test for the heat because the heat does not go — which is the point worth carrying away.

• Fresh fruit gone soft, shrivelled or brown at the stem.
• Dried fruit that snaps rather than bends, or has faded from red to brown.
• A powder with no fruit smell left under the burn.
• Mould or insect damage in a dried packet, which means discarding it.

Buy whole, and the reason is control rather than flavour. A whole pepper — fresh or dried — can be added to a pot and taken out again when the heat is where you want it, which is the traditional Assamese method and the only technique that makes a chilli this hot genuinely usable at home. Powder commits: once it is in the dish it cannot be removed, and the quantity that separates seasoned from inedible is smaller than most kitchen measures can reliably deliver. Powder is the right buy only for dry rubs and seasoning blends, where a whole pepper cannot go.

• Fresh: firm, brightly coloured, with the characteristic wrinkled dimpled skin and a green stem.
• Dried: pliable rather than brittle, deep red rather than brown, and fruity when torn.
• Powder: buy the smallest quantity sold. A domestic kitchen will not finish a large jar before the flavour goes, and the heat will still be there.
• Prefer whole fruit over powder where the dish allows, because whole fruit can be removed and powder cannot.
• Check whether a product is ghost pepper or an extract — extracts are a different thing and carry none of the fruit character.

No consumer grade exists. Commercial trade specifies capsaicin content or Scoville equivalent by laboratory measurement, and retail packaging states figures that are marketing rather than specification — often the record maximum rather than anything about the packet in hand.

Solanaceae

A tall, sprawling plant bearing wrinkled, tapering fruits of six to nine centimetres that ripen red, orange or occasionally chocolate. The characteristically rough, dimpled skin distinguishes it from the smoother superhots bred later.

North-east India — Assam, Nagaland and Manipur — and adjacent Bangladesh, where it has been grown as a food and preserving crop long before any interest in its heat outside the region.

• IN (Assam, Nagaland, Manipur) — origin. Assam ghost pepper holds a geographical indication.
• BD — major producer
• LK — notable producer
• US — notable producer. Grown for the hot-sauce and novelty trade rather than for cooking.

Picked ripe by hand, generally with gloves — the capsaicin concentration is high enough to irritate skin during prolonged handling. Fruits are used fresh, sun-dried, or made into pastes and pickles.

1. Ripening and picking — Fruits left to full colour and hand-picked, with skin protection.Why: Capsaicin peaks at full ripeness, and handling quantity is genuinely irritant.
2. Sun-drying — Whole fruits dried in sun or over low heat until leathery, the traditional preservation route in Assam and Nagaland.Why: Year-round supply. Drying concentrates the heat by removing water and changes the fruit note towards raisin.
3. Milling or extraction — For export: dried fruit milled to powder, or capsaicin extracted as oleoresin for hot sauces and industrial use.Why: The oleoresin trade is a large part of why the pepper is grown commercially outside its home range, and none of it reaches a domestic kitchen.

No consumer grading standard. Trade in dried fruit and powder is specified by capsaicin content or Scoville equivalent, which is a laboratory measurement rather than a retail grade, and nothing on a domestic packet states it reliably.

A long-season annual in cultivation, slow to germinate and slow to fruit, grown on smallholdings across its home range and in polytunnels elsewhere. Yields are modest and the plant is not a commodity crop.

Hot and very humid, with high rainfall — the conditions of the Brahmaputra valley. Heat is strongly affected by growing conditions: the same cultivar grown in a drier climate measures substantially lower, which is a large part of why published figures for this pepper vary so widely.

A regional food crop of north-east India and Bangladesh with a long domestic history and almost no external one until 2000, when analyses began reporting extraordinary capsaicin levels. Guinness recognised it as the world's hottest chilli in 2007; bred cultivars took the record in 2011 and have taken it repeatedly since. That five-year window is the whole of its international fame and none of its actual history, and the crop it displaced attention from — an ordinary ingredient in Assamese and Naga cooking, used in curries, chutneys and pickles — is what it still mostly is at home.

A modern export trade in dried fruit, powder and capsaicin oleoresin, driven by the hot-sauce industry and by novelty products. Assam ghost pepper carries a geographical indication, which is a recent protection of a long-standing regional crop rather than a historic trade designation.

Chillies generally carry a long traditional-medicine record, and ghost pepper is also used regionally as a deterrent — smeared on fences against elephants, and in the same period developed into a crowd-control agent. Recorded as tradition and use rather than as a health claim.