PuckerButt Pepper Company founder Ed Currie answers the internet's sizzling questions about peppers. Why do only mammals taste capsaicin? What kind of peppers are used in military grade pepper spray? What part of a pepper produces the most heat? This pepper master answers all these questions and more.
The photo of the HPLC system was created by Wikipedia user Kommando and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Director: Lisandro Perez-Rey
Director of Photography: Joanne Hock
Editor: Louville Moore
Expert: Ed Currie
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas; Brandon White
Production Manager: D. Eric Martinez
Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila
Casting Producer: Thomas Giglio
Camera Operator: John Disher
Sound Mixer: Marshall Bain
Production Assistant: Alex Buchhorn
Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Paul Tael
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Special Thanks: Heather Peters
The photo of the HPLC system was created by Wikipedia user Kommando and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Director: Lisandro Perez-Rey
Director of Photography: Joanne Hock
Editor: Louville Moore
Expert: Ed Currie
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas; Brandon White
Production Manager: D. Eric Martinez
Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila
Casting Producer: Thomas Giglio
Camera Operator: John Disher
Sound Mixer: Marshall Bain
Production Assistant: Alex Buchhorn
Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Paul Tael
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Special Thanks: Heather Peters
Category
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TechTranscript
00:00 I'm Ed Curry and I grow the hottest peppers in the world.
00:03 Let's answer some questions from the internet.
00:06 This is Pepper Support.
00:08 [music]
00:13 @DustinDioski asks, "Peppers, why do you hurt me?"
00:17 Peppers don't actually hurt you.
00:19 It's the capsaicin that's in the pepper that is reacting with a TRVP1 receptor that only mammals have
00:26 to send a signal to your brain that we perceive as heat.
00:30 It's just a brain trick to tell you not to eat the fruit.
00:33 There is no actual heat. It will not hurt you.
00:36 @BoxVirgo asks, "Did you know birds can't taste capsaicin?"
00:42 Yes, I did know that. Only mammals can taste capsaicin.
00:46 They're the only ones with the TRVP1 receptor that sends the signal to the brain.
00:51 @TheJakeDeVries asks, "What kind of peppers do they use to make pepper spray?"
00:57 The military uses jalapenos because they're so damn cheap, but they use a lot of them to extract the capsaicin.
01:04 There is a company that makes bear spray that uses Carolina Reaper.
01:07 It costs a lot more and it's a lot more potent on the end product.
01:12 @Estema asks, "Quick question. Why does drinking milk help with spicy food?"
01:17 I hate to tell you, but drinking milk does not help with spicy food.
01:21 What they're doing is coating all the membrane inside your mouth,
01:25 therefore shutting off the reaction with the TRVP1 receptor.
01:29 But saliva eats through carbohydrates really fast.
01:33 All of a sudden you're hot again and you drink more milk.
01:36 So you wind up drinking a half gallon of milk and then you throw up all over the place.
01:41 And then you say, "Oh, that pepper made me throw up."
01:44 No, it didn't. It was the half gallon of milk you drank.
01:47 Don't drink milk. Drink citric acid. It's just a matter of time before it's going to go away.
01:52 @TorlessB asks, "How can I reduce the heat of the peppers in my hands? I have washed it twice with detergent."
02:00 So what causes the heat on your hands is the oil that the capsaicin's in.
02:05 It's called oleoresin. And that gets into all the grooves in your hand.
02:09 If you use hot water, what you're doing is opening up all the pores in your skin and letting that oil go in,
02:15 which is just going to make it last a whole lot longer.
02:18 Start with cold water. Citric acid, like lemon juice or lime juice, will also cut that oil.
02:25 Makes it go away a lot faster.
02:27 @P_Nettling asks, "I have no idea what the health benefits for various raw hot peppers,
02:33 but I've been eating them near daily for a month now and I feel great."
02:37 That's awesome! I eat peppers on a daily basis too and I always feel great.
02:42 Health benefits. One, because of the heat that we perceive, the body releases dopamine and endorphin into your system.
02:50 That calms your nerves and makes you feel good and gives you kind of a euphoric feeling like a runner's high.
02:55 But peppers are really, really high in vitamin C and vitamin A.
02:59 They raise your metabolism. They help with digestion.
03:03 People think peppers will give you an ulcer. No, they kill the bacteria that gives you ulcer.
03:08 @MeganMurray asks, "Why are pepper seeds so much hotter than peppers? #Nonsense."
03:15 Well @MeganMurphy, that is #Nonsense.
03:18 What it is that's hot is the membrane that the seeds are attached to.
03:23 This white membrane in here that the seeds are attached to, that is what is producing the heat.
03:29 If you took the seeds and washed them in hydrogen peroxide and then ate one, there'd be no heat at all.
03:35 Because you've taken the oil off that seed. You just gotta watch out for this membrane that's inside.
03:41 Now in a super hot pepper, that membrane goes all the way around the fruit.
03:45 But in something like a jalapeno, it's in very defined rips.
03:49 The skin on a jalapeno only has about a third of the Scoville that the membrane has.
03:56 @Joe68846490, "Anyone tell me what is the hottest pepper in the world?"
04:03 Well the hottest pepper in the world used to be Smokin' Ed's Carolina Reaper at 1.642 million Scoville heat units.
04:11 This is Pepper X, which is now the new Guinness World Record for the hottest pepper in the world
04:18 at 2.693 million Scoville heat units.
04:23 Over a million hotter than the Carolina Reaper, which was my record for 10 years.
04:30 @JillRosenthal asked, "What is a Scoville?"
04:34 Well a Scoville might refer to Wilbur Scoville, who is the inventor of the skill known as the Scoville heat units.
04:41 A high-performance liquid chromatograph was invented,
04:45 and that measures all the compounds in a whole bunch of different things, including peppers.
04:50 This bell pepper has absolutely no Scoville heat units.
04:55 Jalapeno, which is about 3,000 Scoville heat units.
04:58 A Hungarian hot pepper, which can go up to about 10,000 Scoville heat units.
05:03 Fresno, maybe 20,000.
05:05 Habanero, this is about 100,000 Scoville heat units.
05:09 The chocolate bootla, which is at about 1.4 million Scoville heat units.
05:14 Carolina Reaper, 1.642 million Scoville heat units.
05:18 And a gnarly Pepper X, 2.693 million Scoville heat units.
05:26 @AlexZeland asked, "Tonight's dinner conversation, how exactly do you breed hotter and hotter peppers?"
05:34 Well Alex, you need to have two pepper plants.
05:38 And those two plants have to have the right compounds in them that you're looking for.
05:43 These aren't pepper plants, but this is the way that you crossbreed any of the plants you want to try crossbreeding.
05:50 You take a fine paintbrush and you go to the first flower and you roll that paintbrush around in the flower.
05:57 And then you go to a flower on a different plant and try to transfer the pollen.
06:02 As the bud turns into a pepper and the fruit starts growing,
06:06 "Hey, is this the fruit that I really want? Does it taste like I want?"
06:10 You take the seeds out and you replant that.
06:13 If that grows the same exact fruit, then you've got the first generation of your crossbreed.
06:19 The time span between crossing a pepper and achieving stability is 8 to 12 generations.
06:25 For us, we can do that in 6 years because we have greenhouses.
06:29 But if you're doing it at home, it's going to take you 10 years at least to get a stable plant.
06:35 @StoneShedCrafts asked, "Can I save seeds from inside peppers, dry them and use them to grow pepper plants in the spring?
06:43 How about chilies too? Pepper plants and chili plants are all the same family."
06:48 So, you can do that. I do that. That's how I get all of my seeds.
06:52 We take each and every seed out of a pepper plant.
06:56 And then, you know, I save from every single pepper a few seeds for the future.
07:02 I have about 7,800 different kinds of peppers that I've saved seeds from.
07:08 It's a long process when you're doing it. I recommend wearing gloves.
07:13 But you can just pull the ribs out, let them dry, separate the pepper seeds.
07:17 I wash them in a little bit of hydrogen peroxide and water and it takes the heat off.
07:22 @AkaCinders asked, "I have the hardest time with peppers. I can't seem to get them to grow no matter what I do. I haven't hit the right conditions yet."
07:31 What happens most of the time when people fail with pepper plants is they're trying too hard.
07:36 Peppers are a weed. If you have sun, you have dirt, and you have water, you have the right conditions.
07:43 And the plant will tell you when it needs water.
07:46 Anytime you see that plant start to wilt, give it a little more moisture. It'll stand right back up again.
07:52 Now the first mistake most people make is they plant the seed too deep.
07:56 Birds eat the seeds, they transport them, they poop them out.
07:59 And then a pepper grows. They're taking a poop and flying away.
08:03 That's how deep you need to put that pepper seed, an eighth of an inch.
08:07 @W6Oemberdy asks, "How does the Scoville scale measure the exact hotness of peppers?"
08:15 It's a chemical process. First, what we do is dehydrate peppers for approximately 96 hours.
08:21 Then we emulsify them and boil them.
08:23 A small sample is taken out and put into a machine called high-performance liquid chromatograph, commonly referred to as the HPLC.
08:31 And that machine gives us a graph, and that graph has peaks where all the different compounds are.
08:37 And we know these peaks are capsaicin, dihydrocapsaicin, and norgel hydrocapsaicin.
08:43 The area of those peaks is then put into a chemical equation from the American Association of Analytical Chemists.
08:52 And that gives you the exact Scoville heat units of that pepper sample.
08:57 @CharlieMarx asks, "When are pepper breeders going to stop? When is too many Scoville units too many?"
09:05 Right now, we have peppers that are 2.6 million or higher.
09:10 Theoretically, if the models are correct, we can get that up to about 7.9 million, but it's going to take a lot of time.
09:17 @DokiYanga asks, "Yeah, so how do you make hot sauce?"
09:22 First ingredient has got to be peppers, either in a pepper mash form or fresh peppers.
09:30 You take fresh peppers that have been de-stemmed with a little bit of vinegar.
09:35 You only need somewhere between 8 and 14 percent of the volume in vinegar.
09:41 And then you heat that up, and you get it to a boil, and then you can it.
09:45 And that is fresh pepper mash.
09:47 And then you need a little bit of vinegar to acidify it a little bit more.
09:51 We're going to guesstimate about one cup.
09:56 Next ingredient, people like salt. It's about a teaspoon. That's all you need.
10:00 I'm going to put in a little bit of onion powder and a little bit of garlic powder.
10:04 Garlic gives a little bit of body in there and all that goodness and flavor.
10:08 Black pepper is a spice. It is not a pepper.
10:12 And what I like to do, if you have it at home, you take a little bit of turmeric.
10:17 It livens up the taste.
10:20 First you have to mix it up, and then you put it on the stove.
10:23 And you heat it up to a minimum of 185 degrees.
10:27 After that is done, you can put it in a container and put it in the refrigerator.
10:31 I think hot sauce, by law right now, has a two-year shelf life.
10:35 But science, that has to do with that pH.
10:38 Because it's good for eight to ten years, no issues at all.
10:41 @Karestan asks, "Everyone, what is your strategy on how to win a hot pepper eating contest?"
10:48 Starting to think, I might be in over my head.
10:51 You're going to need to do hotter and hotter peppers.
10:54 Start with jalapenos. Then maybe go to Fresnos.
10:58 If you're daring, you might jump to a habanero, and you eat those.
11:02 Then you look for a ghost pepper, and you eat those.
11:05 So the next question comes from @AndyDoodle56.
11:09 "I just bit into a Carolina Reaper. It hurt so good, but WTF what's happening to my body?"
11:16 So Andy, I think the best way to explain what is happening to your body is to bring in a victim.
11:22 Bella is going to eat this Reaper.
11:25 So the first thing that happens when she bites into the pepper, you get this sweet taste.
11:29 But then the heat hits.
11:31 And immediately, from the back of your throat all the way through your mouth, there's an explosion just like lava.
11:38 Those TRVP1 receptors are shooting signals to your brain.
11:42 And you're going to have a fight response, or you're going to have a flight response.
11:45 Now when you have the fight response, you kind of look like she does.
11:49 Her body is starting to sweat. It's getting into her blood system.
11:52 So she might or might not feel a little like her arms feeling a little bit lighter, or different parts of her body tingling.
11:59 What your body starts doing is pumping dopamine and endorphin into your system.
12:04 Kind of akin to a narcotic, and it's going to give you a runner's high.
12:08 When you are hot, your body starts sweating. It's trying to cool you down.
12:13 How do you feel?
12:14 I feel floaty.
12:15 My throat and my tongue absolutely feel searing pain.
12:22 I'm having a hard time concentrating, like I heard maybe five words you said.
12:27 And it feels like my throat is wanting to close, and it's on fire.
12:32 It almost feels very puffy right here.
12:36 And that's a precursor to capsaicin cramps.
12:39 If you're feeling that way, just get on out of here, Heather.
12:42 Alright, you got it.
12:44 I wouldn't recommend anybody doing a whole pepper.
12:47 The best way to do it is to cut it into little slices and just taste it.
12:51 @iExudeSarcasm asks,
12:54 "When people eat shit that is made with raw ghost peppers and all those spicier peppers, do they lose a bit of the lining in their colon?"
13:01 If it doesn't cause ulcers or anything like that.
13:04 But what does happen is that massive amount of capsaicin your body is perceiving as a poison,
13:09 your stomach excludes it into the smooth muscle, and you get a cramp.
13:14 And that cramp can be very, very painful.
13:16 And they come in waves.
13:18 Guys think they're dying, but they're not dying.
13:20 They're just having a menstrual cramp, and they don't know what it feels like.
13:24 And as the pepper makes its way through your intestinal tract, it's going to catch up with your colon and your anus.
13:30 So you might experience the burning ring of fire.
13:33 @babywasteland asks,
13:35 "Has anyone ever died from eating an extremely hot pepper?"
13:39 To my knowledge, and through all the research we've done,
13:42 there has been no record of anybody dying from eating an extremely hot pepper.
13:47 The only real concern you need to have,
13:50 do you have an allergy to nightshades?
13:52 Because peppers are in the nightshade family.
13:54 Most people know that because they've been given tomatoes when they were young.
13:59 Do you have a pre-existing heart condition that can't handle the elevation in metabolism?
14:04 And do you have an aneurysm anywhere that's been diagnosed?
14:09 Other than that, there's really nothing to fear from peppers.
14:13 @Nixian_Saint asks,
14:15 "You ever think about how different wasabi hotness is to hot pepper hotness?"
14:19 Most Americans have not had wasabi.
14:22 What they've had is horseradish that's been dyed.
14:24 Horseradish does not have capsaicin in it.
14:26 The burn is from a different compound that we also perceive as heat.
14:32 We do a wasabi mustard with reaper peppers.
14:36 That is amazing.
14:38 The lingering burn from the horseradish family,
14:42 that happens on the side of your mouth and in your nasal,
14:46 combined with the burn from super hot peppers
14:49 that goes brutally down your tongue and into your throat,
14:52 gives me an endorphin rush like nothing else.
14:55 @Austin_Till asks,
14:57 "Guys, what do you think the next hottest pepper is going to be?"
15:00 I think the next hottest pepper is going to be Pepper Y,
15:03 because I developed it, I know the genealogy,
15:06 I know the stability, and I know the testing.
15:09 I have not heard of anybody out in the pepper community
15:12 who actually has a stable pepper that can even beat Pepper X.
15:15 So when I'm ready to release Pepper Y, that will be released.
15:19 Thank you for all the questions today, folks.
15:21 It's been an honor to be here.
15:23 Thanks for watching Pepper Support.
15:25 for watching.
15:26 I'm your host, Bill Gates, and thanks for listening to the Bill Gates Report.
15:26 (dramatic music)