The World’s Hottest Chilli… yowza!

I went to the South Devon Chilli Farm on Monday with my client, Daddy Donkey Kick-Ass Mexican Grill, freelance food writer Catherine Phipps and a freelance film maker (Duncan) to make a small documentary for the Daddy D website about the farm which grows over 10,000 chillies each year. The farm, owned by Jason Nickels and Steve Waters and their families, is unique in the UK – no where else can visitors come and wander among the thousands of fruiting chilli plants, witness the production of the products they make at the farm and, most importantly, sample all of the delicious jams, sauces, salsas, chocolate and more.

We learned a lot about the different levels of ‘chilli heat’ and the rating scale on which chillies are measured – the Scoville scale – as defined by the amount of capsaicin contained and we were lucky enough to try the one and only Bhut Jolokia chilli from India, the hottest chilli in the world. The colour of this chilli is a very distinct flourescent orange and the smell is sweet but spicy – think of a juicy orange scent with a bit of lingering tobasco sauce. I wasn’t brave enough to bite into this sucker, but as Jason assured me, simply touching the inside of it to my tongue would do the trick. So, I gave it a shot – and my entire head instantly burst into flames and was on fire for about an hour. My client, Joel, actually took a small bite out of it, resulting in an immediate screaming reaction and a bright red face for almost eight hours!

I can’t imagine why anyone would enjoy this amount of heat – the highest on the Scoville scale at 1 million – but apparently there are people out there who like it. In fact, the Chilli Farm bottles a hot sauce made with this fire ball of a chilli. The heat was so intense that the spice lingered on our fingers even after multiple washes and still, hours after we left the farm, we had an eye-touching catastrophe on the car ride home.

Visiting the farm was a lot of fun – the different chilli plants were all so colourful and labeled in a way that told the best ways to cook and eat them, their level of heat, country of origin and more. We tasted different flavours of chilli chocolate like orange, coffee and fruit & spice, sampled the sweet and spicy apple chilli jam and the bright orange habanero hot sauce, all made and bottled at the farm. The owners were very welcoming and full of chilli knowledge – I would definitely recommend visiting this place to all spicy food lovers out there!

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