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I Made 2-Million-Scoville Pickles...


A photograph of the finished pickles in several jars

About a year ago I was gifted a local cache of spicy pickles. I was immediately in love with them and finished off the batch in record time. Over the past winter break I was reminded of them and started fiending for that sweet heat again. Unfortunately I couldn’t find anything similar in any of the nearby shops so I decided to see if I could make my own. This time, though, I wanted to take the heat up to 11.

Want to skip the fluff and jump right to the recipe? Hit this link: Pickles for Chiliheads

Gathering Materials

I’ve never pickled anything before so the first step was to do some research. It turns out the pickle brine is a simple solution of mostly water, white vinegar, fresh dill, salt, & sugar. Since I wanted to make hot pickles though, I figured I needed a few extras:

  • Cucumbers (obviously!)
  • Hot peppers (obviously!)
  • Red pepper flakes
  • Black Peppercorns
  • Alum (to help with brine absorption and retain the cucumbers’ CRONCH)
  • Garlic to cut/compliment the heat of the peppers

I ended up getting two kinds of cucumbers: regular and pickling style. The pickling style were great for slicing into eighths length-wise, and the regular cucumbers were great for crinkle-cutting into chips (sandwich style). But, more on that later. The next task was finding hot peppers in the dead of winter…

Finding the Perfect Pepper

OK so I had all the base ingredients along with four 32oz. mason jars. Now I needed to find the perfect peppers. After striking out at local stores I turned to etsy of all places. There I found a seller (SacredHeat) and was intrigued by their offering. At time of ordering they had Jay’s Peach Ghost Scorpion, Chocolate Bhut Jolokia, and Red Komodo Dragon peppers in stock. Fantastic.

I put all of them into my cart and happily slapped down twenty-one ninety-nine plus tax. Within a week they had arrived! I ended up with about four of each pepper which was perfect. I figured with this mix I could do a “plain” pickle jar as a baseline, then one jar for each type of pepper. I’d never had any of these peppers before but their scoville charts looked excellent. In fact, the Red Komodo was listed as potentially reaching 2 Million Scoville, or, equivalent to the dastardly Carolina Reaper. I’d never had any of these peppers before, so before I got to pickling…

Pepper Sampling

a picture of the peppers on a cutting board

…I took a quick detour down sampling lane. One of each was enough, and I prepared with a stack of crackers & peanut butter in case things got crazy. Pictured from left to right:

  • Jay’s Peach Ghost Scorpion
  • Red Komodo Dragon
  • Chocolate Bhut Jolokia

I ended up eating all three back-to-back which was an incredible journey. I’ve listed them below in the order I sampled them:

1. Jay’s Peach Ghost Scorpion | ~1,000,000 SHUs

At 1,000,000 scoville heat units, Jay’s Peach Ghost Scorpion pepper kicked things off RIGHT. Hailing from the exotic land of Pennsylvania, USA, this pepper is a cross between the Peach Bhut Jolokia and Pink Trinidad Scorpion peppers. Like many super-hot peppers, Jay’s pepper has a floral flavor backed with a lil citrus. Don’t let that fool you though - the burn from it lasts ages. I’d say this was the most flavor-rich of the three.

2. Chocolate Bhut Jolokia | ~800,000-1,001,304 SHUs

Well, if I wasn’t awake before I ate Jay’s pepper I certainly was now. I knew the Red Komodo was going to be the biggest mountain to climb so I figured it would be a good idea to rest up first with the Chocolate Bhut Jolokia. Rest, of course, being a relative term. The Jolokia was still brutally hot, and no, it had no resemblance to chocolate flavoring - at least not compared to any chocolate I’ve ever eaten! Instead the peppers is a little sweet but with a real smoky flavor. I bet mixing this one up into a thick BBQ sauce would make a winning combination. Anyway, with two of three down the hatch, I had one last opponent to face…

3. Red Komodo Dragon | ~1,400,00-2,200,000 SHUs

…the Red Komodo Dragon pepper. Originally produced in Bedfordshire, UK, this pepper is apparently sold in Tescos around England. The internet seems divided on the topic of its heat level, but sources I could find suggested this thing could be as hot as the Carolina Reaper pepper. In fact, the original is packaged with a warning label that simply reads: “Do not consume whole. Do not touch without gloves.”

With that warning and the potential for this to be twice as hot as the Jay’s pepper I’d had only moments ago, I won’t lie – I was intimidated. BUT! excitement won out and so I dove in. I cropped the top with a knife and quartered the pepper, exposing the many seeds at its core. I sighed, disregarded the warning, and consumed it whole.

The key to surviving a hot pepper, as I’ve learned is to make sure you chew thoroughly. This helps drain the juices and prevents them from kicking the back of your throat. Swallowing whole also makes your stomach work harder to digest the peppers which can easily cause cramping and nausea. I reminded myself of these notes and chewed the Red Komodo dutifully. After chewing for a good seven or ten seconds I knew I was going to be in trouble because I was feeling zero heat. I chewed a couple seconds more and swallowed.

Like stoking a steam engine with coal the heat sizzled up right away. I was ON FIRE. The heat was so intense it was all I could focus on. My heartrate rose, my vision narrowed, my chest tightened, and immediately I was blinking away sweat and tears! No doubt this was the hottest pepper I’d ever eaten. The only way out was to steel my mind and focus on breathing slowly & deliberately so as not to panic. Like meditation on nightmare-mode. Once I felt the first hint that the heat was breaking the truth came into focus: I’d picked the perfect pepper for my pickles!

After ~20 minutes of burning, one endorphin-dump, and LOTS of “hahhhhh, HOOOooos” later I followed up my firecracker lunch with some peanut butter on crackers. Overall the Komodo pepper was very floral - a taste that stuck to my singed-off tastebuds like glue for three or four days post-consumption.

Preparing the Pickles

Once my brain turned back on I went right into making the pickles so as not to let the produce spoil. The full recipe is copied below in case you’d like to make your own. Since I was dealing with four, 32oz. mason jars I ended up quadrupling this recipe:

The Recipe: Pickles for Chiliheads

Equipment

  • Cutting Board
  • Chef’s Knife (or Crinkle Cutter)
  • 32oz. Mason Jar
  • 1 Big Stovetop Pot
  • Cheesecloth

Ingredients

  • 2lb Cucumbers (regular or pickling style are fine!)
  • 1.5 Cups White Vinegar
  • Hot Peppers (dealer’s choice)
  • 2 Cup Water
  • 2 Tbsp Salt
  • 3 Tsp Sugar
  • 8 Cloves Garlic
  • 1/8 Tsp Alum
  • Fresh Dill
  • Black Peppercorns
  • Crushed Red Pepper Flakes

Directions

  1. Set out the cutting board
  2. Wash and dry the mason jar
  3. Wash and dry the cucumbers
  4. Slice cucumbers into eighths lengthwise OR into 1/4” chips (sandwich style)
  5. Peel and finely chop garlic cloves
  6. Add dill, peppercorns, and red pepper flakes into a cheesecloth
  7. Dump the vinegar, water, salt, and sugar into a pot, stir ingredients until dissolved
  8. Knot cheesecloth and set inside the pot with the other ingredients
  9. Let brine raise to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer a couple minutes
  10. Meanwhile, chop the tops off the hot peppers and peel the garlic
  11. Toss the peppers, garlic, and alum into the mason jar
  12. Add more peppercorns and red pepper flakes to the mason jar (be liberal with these!)
  13. Take brine off the heat and pour into the mason jar, leave about a finger’s width of space from the top
  14. Carefully seal the jar with its lid and let cool to room temp
  15. Once the jar is room temp, stuff it into the fridge and let it pickle for three weeks

Judgement Day: The Pickle Taste Test

Finally after weeks of waiting the pickles were ready to eat! I took out the jars and prepared a quick tasting board. The best bit was the satisfying POP! from the vacuum-sealed lids releasing their clutches on the precious pickles within.

I gotta say – the flavor of those peppers transferred wonderfully to the pickles. Of course, they were HOT, but the heat was much more subdued when compared to the raw pepper tasting I’d done earlier, which, frankly, was a good thing. Instead, the flavor profile of each pepper was greatly enhanced. Each jar had a delightful (and unique) taste. I’ve tried to sneak them into all kinds of meals like burgers and turkey sandwiches, and they also make a good snack simply on their own. Given the outcome and how dead-simple the recipe was I’d call this experiment mission accomplished.

If you give this recipe a spin tell me what you think! I can’t wait for summer to roll around so I can give this another go with different peppers. With any luck maybe I’ll be able to get my hands on an elusive Pepper X…

Until next time!

Chillihead Hot Tip - Handling the Heat

Ate something a litle TOO hot and just want the sting to go away? Skip the milk! The best way I’ve found to kill the heat is to head to the sink and rinse your mouth out. Take a mouthful of water, swish it around, and spit it back out. Rinse and repeat a couple times and the burn will quickly extinguish!