'Pepper X' Creator Ed Currie Tries 11 of the Hottest Hot Sauces in the World

I am Smokin' Ed Currie.

I'm a professional hot sauce maker and pepper breeder

and we are here today to try 10 sauces

that will melt your face off.

But we're looking for flavor and balance, not just heat.

Pull up a stool, put on your big girl pants

and buckle up for this wild ride.

[upbeat music]

Spicy Shark Hammah Gatah 6-Fin Series.

Looking at the label, a hammerhead shark on top of a gator

with blood and fire coming out of it.

That pretty much tells me they think this is very, very hot.

So the very first ingredient is scorpion peppers,

which give you a really good burn, but they're not that hot.

Pineapple juice, banana, tomato, almond flour,

that's a unique thickener.

There's a lot of things going on in here.

With all sauce that is small batch,

I always recommend shaking.

The ingredients are gonna separate

as it sits on the shelf at the store.

When you open the bottle, immediately you get aroma

of that spice mixture

and the molasses I think is coming through

because you can smell the sweetness.

It's dripping pretty fast, but it's leaving a lot of chunks.

That means they're using a lot more pepper

and a lot more of, like, say the fruits

than they are vinegar and a thickener.

The start of this is all spices.

[coughs]

What's happened in my throat,

that pepper has now overcome the sweetness

and now I'm getting that pepper flavor starting down here

in my throat and it's moving up.

I don't really taste the pineapple juice or the banana.

It made me think of ice cream or something

and it made me happy and joyous inside,

thinking, Oh, this is gonna be really good.

But I was disappointed

that those two flavors didn't really come out.

His old hottest sauce had a six on it.

This is supposed to be hotter,

but as far as flavor, this is an absolute winner.

PuckerButt Reaper Squeezein's.

It's one of my favorite sauces.

We decided to make it a little hotter.

If you look at the label, reaper peppers, vinegar

and reaper powder, three ingredients in it,

two of which are different forms of the same thing.

Tabasco, those kind of sauces, 1% pepper, 99% vinegar.

This is like 90% pepper, 10% vinegar.

We had a complaint that it was too thick

to come out of the bottle,

so we put down a little more vinegar

just to make it a little less viscous.

Unlike other sauces that might separate,

it's leaving nice, thick line all the way behind it

instead of separate chunks.

So you know this is gonna be a consistent hot sauce.

Frankly, one of the hottest sauces out there, for me,

it is one of the tastiest sauces.

Makes my nose run right away.

I'm kind of tingly.

All you have is pepper flavor.

You can't even taste the vinegar.

A lot of that pepper powder has been reconstituted

with the vinegar, so it adds to the thickness.

The heat on the reaper when you eat raw peppers

comes on immediately.

It's like a punch in the face.

When you cook them down,

you get the chance to taste the flavor of the pepper

before the heat builds up.

This is more like a volcano coming up

and then erupting as opposed

to putting a charcoal briquette in your mouth.

Pepper Palace, The End: Flatline.

I want to tell you the difference

between a natural pepper sauce

and a pepper sauce people think is really hot.

We've got our good friends at Pepper Palace,

their product called Flatline.

It comes in this little bottle, when you go there,

if you want to try it, you gotta sign a waiver.

It says Carolina reapers, oleoresin capsicum.

Oleoresin capsicum means it is a chemical,

can either be extracted from actual peppers,

which is a very expensive process

or it can be a chemical.

I don't want to get any of this on my hands.

This is essentially a chemical oil

with a little pepper added to it.

Some people like doing this, most people use it for a dare

and I don't judge anybody who makes it.

What I do know is that I do not want to eat it

'cause I don't know what's really in there

and it's kind of adhering to the plastic.

What is that?

It follows none of the rules that I would personally use

to put in my mouth.

Tommy, I'm not gonna eat this.

Mikey V's E.A.F.O.

Can Mikey V make a super hot sauce with flavor and heat?

Yes he can, I've known Mikey, I love Mikey.

This I think he put out as a chili head collector item.

It's got a lot of really nice ingredients in it.

Carolina reaper peppers, fresh peppers, fresh garlic,

black Hawaiian sea salt, ghost pepper powder.

I don't like salt. It overpowers the sweetness of peppers.

It gives it more of almost a charcoal tone.

Those fresh Carolina reapers

that he used are gonna have a different burn

than the ghost pepper powder,

which is gonna give you an all around,

for the chili head, an all around burn.

For the normal person, it's just gonna hurt.

It came out in full drops

instead of pouring, kind of viscous.

It's moving a little quick,

but as you can see, it's leaving just chunks

of reaper pepper.

You can also see the specs of powder in there,

but I'm interested to see what the lime juice

and the sea salt do to accelerate the heat.

If you want something to be hotter

and you're not using a lot of pepper,

you add salt or citric acid.

Heat wise, right now I'm not getting any heat.

I know he uses a lot of pepper,

but when water is the fifth ingredient,

by taking the water out

and replacing that volume with either the lime juice

or the vinegar,

you would've had a much more pepper-forward experience.

But this 11 out of 10 claim, this ain't happening

and I've waited for it to build.

PuckerButt Pepper Company, Unique Garlic Pepper X Edition.

With this unique garlic, I wanted to do different versions.

I wanted to make it a little hotter, even though it was hot,

hot, hot to begin with.

So this one we made with Pepper X

and it's got five flames,

which most of my sauces do 'cause I'm an idiot.

It's got chili pepper, which are Pepper X, vinegar,

onion powder, garlic powder.

The powders that are in it absorb the liquid in the vinegar

so it adds to the thickness.

This isn't going anywhere.

It's a pretty thick sauce, which lets you know

that it's full of ingredients, not full of liquid.

It's a Pepper X sauce. I'm not gonna do a full spoon.

So the very first thing you get,

the very first hint you get is the very little bit

of black pepper that's in there.

Black pepper tends to come on first

when you have garlic and onion.

The garlic is just overpowering,

the onion's just for sweetness, but that Pepper X builds up.

It is a very, very hot sauce.

This is not for the faint of heart.

I'm feeling a fire in my chest

that makes me want to go get that donut

that I stashed a little while ago.

A scale of one to 10 for normal people,

this is probably a seven or an eight.

It's kind of like a plug and play hot sauce.

It'll work well with any super hot pepper.

It went from the reaper to Pepper X.

It'll probably go to Pepper Y and Pepper Z.

I just think it's one of the best sauces I've ever made.

Jersey Bonfire, The Original Black Garlic.

For any of you out there who don't know

what black garlic is, it became one of those things

that everybody was like, Ooh, black garlic.

And it's got a unique failure.

It's kind of [indistinct]

and there's a lot of horrible black garlic sauces out there.

Unless you're mixing it in with other things,

you would never eat on its own.

But some people, like the good chefs at Jersey Bonfire,

know how to mix it in.

It's got 7-Pot Primo peppers

and vinegar, water, Jersey-fresh canned tomatoes, sugar,

garlic, raw garlic, just excites the palette.

Whereas black garlic to me is a deeper base flavor.

The one thing is they use xanthan gum to thicken it up.

And why sauce companies use it

is because the ingredients

that they're using make for a very thin sauce

and thin sauces are unappealing to the customer.

If you look at Tabasco, just looks like red water.

Cholula has a little bit more consistency

even though they've got the same percentage

of pepper in them.

And that's the xanthan gum.

The Tabasco just goes all over the plate.

That Cholula stays in place

and that's really all people use it for.

Even though it has the xanthan gum in it,

it's pouring down the plate a little faster than I expected.

But what I like is it's leaving a lot of chunks

of what looks like pepper and garlic.

I thought I'd smell more garlic to begin with,

but it just kind of smells salty.

And strangely enough, when I tasted it,

the salt did not come through.

I'm getting more of a spicy tomato vibe,

almost an Italian vibe with it.

I'm very pleasantly surprised that it did not taste salty.

PuckerButt Pepper Company Gator Sauce.

I named this after my best buddy, Brett Rogers,

who likes to call himself Gator.

Very first hot sauce ever made with Pepper X in it.

It's got Pepper X mash and reaper powder.

You're just gonna get a very simple taste, pepper,

but this is a brutal sauce.

Nothing on this label warns you

what's gonna happen when you try this hot sauce.

It's very, very thick.

The only thing that slid down is a big chunk of pepper

that came out of it.

There's really not much liquid in it.

It's a really delicious tasting pepper,

but the brutal heat that comes on very slowly

after you eat it, it's almost not worth doing without food.

But they don't like me here.

They just wanna hurt me.

Wow.

That sweet taste from the pepper is just, it's beautiful,

it tastes great,

but the heat that comes on,

it feels like someone just opened my chest,

put flames inside and then sewed me back up

and those flames are trying to come up and get out.

But this pepper is very unique and very versatile.

It has a great flavor.

This will go awesome on some chocolate ice cream.

It's just brutally hot.

On a scale of one to 10, I'd say this is an eight or a nine.

High River Hot Sauces Peppers Up

is from my good friend Steve Seabury at High River.

All of his sauces have combinations of different fruits

that people don't normally use in a sauce.

It says right on the front, A blackberry

and blueberry Apollo pepper sauce,

which is gonna be maybe the next Guinness World Record.

When you look at the ingredients, Apollo pepper mash,

Apollo pepper, distill it, blackberries, blueberries,

Yuzu juice.

Steve's known for making some really complex sauces

taste really good.

For the amount of liquid in there, surprisingly thick sauce.

You can see chunks of the fruit, chunks of the pepper,

and even though it's going to surpass Pepper X,

I went for a big spoonful 'cause I really wanna see

how that fruit comes out.

Mm.

The flavor that hit me first kind of tasted

like one of those natural fruit popsicles.

It didn't even taste the pepper.

I don't know if that's the Yuzu actually overpowering

the pepper 'cause of all the citric in it.

It just tasted delicious.

It's getting very hot very quickly.

Not a comfortable heat either.

It went from zero to 10 in about 1.2 seconds,

but I still have that aroma of berry in my nose.

This is an ice cream sauce.

This is a chocolate cake sauce.

This is probably the second hottest

or the third hottest sauce I've tried,

but it's the only one I want to go back to

out of all of them.

That really is a 10 outta 10 on the heat.

But I'd also give this one a 10 outta 10 on flavor.

Wow, you guys should try that.

That's a really good sauce.

Mindset's good.

I know you have to work. I get to go home.

[upbeat music]

Did you get all that fruity and citrus?

I think so.

You notice how Tommy's turning red and I did not turn red?

Professional, amateur.

Alchemy Peppers Watermelon Ghost Hopp Sauce.

Extreme heat, it says on the front.

The ingredients, watermelon puree, ghost pepper,

peach puree, mango puree, citric acid and hops.

I like watermelon puree to eat and drink,

but in a hot sauce, it might be really good.

The citric acids in there just to pH the sauce.

When we're making hot sauce, we want it to be shelf stable

so you have to get things below a pH of 4.3.

Most hot sauces are well below that

because of the large amount of vinegar that you're using.

This one even has a Scoville scale on it,

which says 600,000 to 750,000 SHU.

It's really not a valuable measurement.

Can we measure the Scoville heat unit

that the sauce actually is?

Yes. Does it accurately describe

what's going to happen when you eat it?

No, peppers in it might be 600 to 750,000

but this sauce is definitely not that hot.

There's a dilution factor that comes along

with adding any ingredient to that.

Also, when you cook it, it breaks down the capsaicinoids.

When I open it, what I'm smelling,

just like with one of the other sauces,

I'm smelling salt mesh.

Even though it's got some body,

it's going down that pretty quick.

I can't imagine watermelon puree is too thick

of an ingredient and smelling this,

honestly, even though the label makes it sound good,

the odor is not very good

and I hope I'm pleasantly surprised when I eat it.

You taste watermelon right up front,

but then when you eat salt,

it's right on the front of your tongue.

After that salt attack,

I did get that, like, the peach mango flavor.

The hops flavor didn't come on

till way after I got the sweetness.

It's kinda like an afterthought to it.

It tastes good.

It's just not really hot.

PuckerButt Pepper Company, Extra Mean Green.

Mean Green was one of the original sauces I made,

but we made it extra hot by only picking green pepper,

X green bolas and green reapers.

It doesn't matter what the color of the pepper is,

it matters what the insides look like

and even though these are not quite ripe,

those glands that are inside are producing.

It's got hot green pepper mash, distilled vinegar,

onions, and garlic.

The mash is very thick

and you can actually see giant chunks

of the garlic still in there.

We don't puree this one, we just mix it with the blender.

Ooh, on this one, the predominant flavor is Pepper X,

the onion comes on second

and then you get a little bit of the garlic after.

Probably one of the most unique sauces

out there on the market for super hot sauces

because it tastes delicious

and you really don't get the heat for about, oh,

I would say 20 to 30 seconds into it

because of the large amount of onion

and garlic that's in there.

It is versatile, green and it is mean.

Heatonist Hot Ones Last Dab Xperience.

When I submitted Pepper X for the Guinness World Record,

we decided to make a hot sauce for everybody,

to give them the Pepper X experience.

If you're looking at the ingredients,

Pepper X, vinegar, powder, distillate.

The smell of the pepper is overwhelming.

Even the part that was liquidy

that popped out on the front is not going down the plate.

I made this sauce, I know what to expect

and right now I'm not happy.

It is not the sauce that you just try,

Oh, I want to try some hot sauce.

I do do that, but I only do that when people are filming

in my farm and I wanna hurt them and shut them up

and send them on their way.

People always ask, What else is in there?

There's nothing, there is no...

There is nothing else in there.

It's just straight pepper

and that pepper has such a unique flavor

and taste that people think it has different things in it

like spices and vegetables, but it doesn't.

That's the pepper.

A very little bit goes a long way.

For like 12 wings at home,

we'll take maybe a half a teaspoon

and a half a stick of butter

and we'll make a coating out of that

and it's still extremely hot.

Bang for the buck, this is the one.

This is the hottest thing out there.

If I'm gonna go with uniqueness

and flavor, I gotta go with the Peppers Up.

I wasn't expecting all that very yummy, citrusy experience.

Ror versatility, this Mikey V's Garlic.

For the everyday person, that's probably the one

that you can use the most.

These three are the best of the ones I tried today,

but man, eating that straight is not a good thing.

I got the hiccups, I just burped real nasty

and my tum-tum hurts.

It's one thing to make hot sauce for heat's sake,

but it's another thing to make one that's well balanced,

flavorful, and still brings on the heat.

This is Smokin' Ed Curry here at Epicurious.

I look forward to seeing you again, have a great day.