While your typical sweet pepper weighs in at zero on the Scolville scale, the ghost pepper’s 1 million SHUS make it 125 times hotter than your hottest jalapeno between 200 and 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce. But that was before 2007, when the Bhut jolokia-an Indian chili better known as the ghost pepper-became the first to top a million Scolville Heat Units (SHU), the measure of spicy pain. Once upon a time, Tabasco sauce was considered spicy and a jalapeno hit the upper threshold of heat for the American palate.
