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Scoville Heat Units

Scoville Heat Units. By Ramish And Catherine. What Are Scoville Heat Units?. Scoville Heat Units (SHU’s) are units for the measurement of the “spicy heat” of chilli peppers. Measures how spicy a chili pepper really is.

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Scoville Heat Units

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  1. Scoville Heat Units By Ramish And Catherine

  2. What Are Scoville Heat Units? • Scoville Heat Units (SHU’s) are units for the measurement of the “spicy heat” of chilli peppers. • Measures how spicy a chili pepper really is. • The hottest pepper ever recorded is one of the Dorset Naga peppers, measuring nearly 1,600,000 SHU’s. A Jalapeno measures 3,500-8,000 SHU’s, and a Cayenne pepper (hot enough to be mostly used just as a powder) ranks 30,000-50,000 SHU’s. • The current Guinness World Record holder is the Trinidad Scorpion pepper, which was measured by Guinness; the Dorset Naga was measured and recorded by another organization. • Peppers in this range are cooked and eaten… at a price. When cooking these, thick gloves and a pair of goggles (and in some cases, a gas mask and/or a body suit) are a necessity. One (1) seed from a BhutJolokia is enough to cause severe pain in your mouth for up to 30 minutes. The same pepper has the ability to make you sweat for about two hours at most. The oil extracted from this pepper is applied to fences and so to ward off elephants, and it is also an ingredient in some grenades. Left: The BhutJolokia Pepper, a former record holder for the hottest pepper. Right: The Dorset Naga, the hottest recorded pepper.

  3. Information About the Scoville Scale • How the Scoville scale came to be • A pharmacist named Wilbur Scoville wanted to find out a real measurement for how spicy a chili pepper is. • In 1912, he invented a technique of measuring the spiciness of a chili pepper. • His technique was to use several people and give them capsaicin (the chemical in the pepper which induces the heat) and dilute in measured increments with sugar water. The amount of sugar water required to effectively disperse the heat would be how hot the pepper is. • Basically, the if you ate a pepper, and then drank 500 glasses of sugar water (realistically, it wasn’t glasses the SHU’s are measured with, but I’m just giving an example), the pepper would rank 500 Scoville Heat Units. Nowadays scientists use High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), something just as sensitive as the human tongue, to measure the amount of capsaicin present in a pepper. This provided results that were not as faulty and biased as tongues would provide, because everyone has different tolerance for peppers.

  4. Sources • How is pepper heat measured. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.eatmorechiles.com/Scoville_Heat.html • Lynn, A. (2010, June 16). A guide to handling fresh bhutjolokiachiles. Retrieved from http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/06/a-guide-to-handling-fresh-bhut-jolokia-chiles.html • (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.flickr.com/photos/plantsoma/3123051267/sizes/z/in/photostream/ • "ghost chili" scares off elephants. (2010, October 28). Retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/11/photogalleries/elephant-pictures/photo5.html • Faqs. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.tabasco.com/info_booth/faq/scoville_how.cfm • McGill, J. (n.d.). The dangers of bhutjolokia. Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/facts_5297576_dangers-bhut-jolokia.html

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