Bhut Jolokia Strain II
The Bhut Jolokia or Ghost Pepper – an entry level drug to the world of super-hot peppers. Between 2007 and 2011, before all these new nuclear hot cultivars arrived, the Bhut was crowned the hottest in the world according to Guinness World Records and probably remains the hottest naturally occurring variety. Other names include King Chilli, U-Morok and Raja-Mircha. The plant is originally from Northeast India and is also grown in Bangladesh. Read more about its cultural significance here.
As with many traditionally cultivated peppers like the Jalapeno and Habanero, these plants had time to be bred into resistant crops with high yields. The new Strain II version of the pepper has an even higher yield and larger pods while maintaining the flavour and high heat level gardeners of this plant usually seek.
The pods ripen to red and the skin is thin and bumpy. We would recommend making a devilish hot powder or two use them fresh in your cooking.
As all super-hots, the Bhut Jolokia is from the Cap. chinense species but you might be surprised to hear that it contains some Cap. frutescens genetics, like the little white Aribib Gusano, which we also sell.
Approximately 1,000,000 SHU
Note: It is not quite clear whether the name means pepper from Bhutan or if Bhut cognates with the Assamese for Ghost, hence the name it is known under in much of the anglophone world. Read for yourself from Merrian Webster:
“borrowed from Assamese bhüt-zolokiya (in semi-phonetic transliteration; in Sanskritic transliteration bhōṭ-jalakīyā, phonetically bhʊt-zɔlɔkiya), from bhüt- (probably truncated from bhütiya "of Bhutan, Bhutanese," going back to Old Indo-Aryan *bhōṭṭīya "Tibetan") + zolokiya "pepper," of uncertain origin. This form of the compound is recorded in the University of Gauhati's Candrakānta Abhidhānya (3rd edition, 1987), a comprehensive dictionary of Assamese with English glosses, as a variant (in quotation marks) of bih-zolokiya, literally, "poison pepper." However, the conventional translation as "ghost chili" or "ghost pepper" points to a variant (or misunderstanding?) bhut-zolokiya (in Sanskritic transliteration bhut-jalakīyā), with bhut "ghost, goblin, evil spirit" (corresponding to Sanskrit bhūtá "being, spirit, demon"). The forms bhüt /bhʊt/ and bhut /bhut/ differ only in the vowel, as the dental and retroflex stops have merged in Assamese.”