Ghost peppers - wow!

[Rich Engelhardt]

I got a jar of hot sauce for a Christmas present.
It's Dave's Ghost Pepper.
OMG is this stuff good!
Very flavorful - but - hot beyond description.

This stuff ain't for the faint of heart.

If you like a good full flavored pepper sauce though, the flavor is exceptional.

Anyboday else tried it or use it?(Ghost Pepper)

[Brian Elfert]

My friend grows ghost peppers and makes salsa from the peppers. He recommends just the tiniest amount of the salsa. His son dared a friend to eat a whole ghost pepper. His friend was asking to be taken to the hospital right after he ate it as was so hot.

[John Coloccia]

I like Habaneros, but I stay away from the ghost pepper. The flavor is rather bitter, IMHO, and the accompanying amount of heat really makes it difficult to use in any culinary way. It's almost like a novelty pepper. I've had some bhut jolokia sauce that's pretty good, but it's still a bit hot to use for most, and the pepper itself is so diluted that it's basically just a "yummy" sauce with enough ghost tossed in for heat. The sauces I've tried with any significant amount of pepper in it are all just way too hot and don't have a good flavor to them. I've tried Dave's. A bit too vinegary for my tastes, but goes well on some things.

My favorite hot sauces are this guy:

http://www.dragonsbloodelixir.com/

Nice guy, and local to me...I buy them from him at the farmers market here. If you get out to the Coventry farmers market, he's there and you can pretty much try everything he makes. He has a bhut jolokia sauce that is the best I've had. In fact, the only hot sauces I use are from him, save for Sriracha. Everything he makes is a winner. For Whom The Bell Tolls and Dragons Blood Elixir are my two favorite standard sauces. The Unique Destiny is the Jolokia one, and I usually have some of that around. Under specialty sauces, the wasabi is really fantastic :)

[Rich Engelhardt]

Habaneros are good.
Heatwise, they're just over the limit of what I find easy to eat.
I like to chop one up and sprinkle it on things like scrambled eggs and hash browns or tossed in a salad. Getting the right sized bits and pieces is trickey.
Too big and it's too strong. Too small and it's not enough.
Jalopenos and/or Cayenne are a lot easier for that. I can pile a bunch of them on :D.

I did try to brown some hash browns with some Habaneros mixed in. Bad move. The fumes about killed all of us.
Thankfully, I learned my lesson from that & didn't try mixing some of the Ghost Pepper sauce in with anything cooking in a pan.

One of the downsides I think I'm feeling to all the heat is that I seem to be building up a tolerance of some kind.
I love to deep fry some big fat french fries, then douse them down with some Trappy's instead of vinegar.
I did that last night and I didn't get a nice pleasant "bite" from the Trappys. It wasn't even "warm". Just a bit off of almost bland :(.
Oh well, I can always mix some of the Ghost Pepper in and get some heat I guess.

[David Weaver]

Never tried ghost peppers. In the summer, I grow habaneros and then dice them and pack them away in bags in a freezer for the year for burgers and meat dishes. they are about as hot as I care to go, and better (to me) than most less hot peppers because they have a fruity undertone instead of a bitter aftertaste.

I've never seen ghost pepper plants for sale, but I haven't looked real far. If I have a bad year, the local grocery store often has habaneros for $3 a pound, and a pound goes pretty far if you only put one or two peppers on a burger.

I never do sauces, though....kind of a distaste for condiments or anything that comes off like them. Just the plain peppers on food.

Glad to read on here that the ghost peppers are bitter, rather than finding out in person.

[ray hampton]

I did try to brown some hash browns with some Habaneros mixed in. Bad move. The fumes about killed all of us.
Thankfully, I learned my lesson from that & didn't try mixing some of the Ghost Pepper sauce in with anything cooking in a pan.

.

one trick from my childhood days was to spread Limburger cheese in a car heater vents , maybe the hot peppers would work better in the heater vent

[Gordon Eyre]

A Poblano is about as Hot as I go. :p

[Bryan Slimp]

The Indian government was working on/has weaponized the ghost chili.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/23/ghost-chili-indian-milita_n_509514.html

[Jason Roehl]

The Indian government was working on/has weaponized the ghost chili.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/23/ghost-chili-indian-milita_n_509514.html

It's kind of just a different take on a substance that is already used in non-lethal force projection. Law enforcement grade pepper spray is just highly concentrated capsaicin diluted down to about 2,000,000 Scoville units. Pure capsaicin measures 16,000,000 Scoville units. Recently, the naga bhut jolokia (ghost pepper) was replaced as the world's hottest pepper by the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper.

Personally, I like a variety of hot peppers based on both heat and flavor. I do like habaneros, but they disappeared from my garden this year. Fortunately, I had some Carribbean Red Hots (very similar to, but slightly hotter than habaneros). I also had jalapenos, poblanos, serranos and a couple others I don't recall now. With the hot, dry summer we had here, all the varieties were probably at the hotter end of their range. I'd probably eat more very hot foods, but too much will result in ongoing heartburn for me, so I have to moderate my intake, which means I don't build quite the tolerance I'd like to have.

Hot pepper jelly is one of my big weaknesses now that my wife knows how to make it well. It's regular green pepper jelly with whatever level of heat you want mixed in. Pour it over a block of cream cheese, then spread it on Ritz crackers as an appetizer.

[Rich Engelhardt]

but too much will result in ongoing heartburn for me, so I have to moderate my intake,
Vinegar....best cure for heartburn there is.
I read about using vinegar to treat heartburn a number of years ago. I was real leary of it so I just forgot about it.
Then I noticed that if/when Ihad a salad with italian dressing on it, or ate one of those big giant dill pickles, things that would normally spark a volcano in my gut, didn't bother me.

My wife thinks I'm nuts (LOL! No news flash there ;)). We were in a food store a few months ago and I felt a nasty case of heartburn coming on. I grabbed a jar of dill pickle slices off the shelf and stood in the middle of the aisle chugging down pickel juice :D.
I should have stuck with the heartburn.....she beat me seven ways to Sunday on the arm once we got out of the store for doing that.

[Frank Drew]

A friend of mine grew some Black Pearl peppers that were so hot that she couldn't find any sensible way to use them.

[Harold Burrell]

Vinegar....best cure for heartburn there is.
I read about using vinegar to treat heartburn a number of years ago. I was real leary of it so I just forgot about it.
Then I noticed that if/when Ihad a salad with italian dressing on it, or ate one of those big giant dill pickles, things that would normally spark a volcano in my gut, didn't bother me.

My wife thinks I'm nuts (LOL! No news flash there ;)). We were in a food store a few months ago and I felt a nasty case of heartburn coming on. I grabbed a jar of dill pickle slices off the shelf and stood in the middle of the aisle chugging down pickel juice :D.
I should have stuck with the heartburn.....she beat me seven ways to Sunday on the arm once we got out of the store for doing that.

She probably didn't pound you for chugging the pickle juice...she beat you for putting it back on the shelf! :eek:

[Greg Portland]

I like Habaneros, but I stay away from the ghost pepper. The flavor is rather bitter, IMHO, and the accompanying amount of heat really makes it difficult to use in any culinary way.
Have you tried de-seeding and roasting them to reduce the heat while concentrating the flavors? They have a nice citrus-y flavor. The yellow ones are not nearly as potent (about the same as an habenero)... watch out for the dark ones! I've had some great ghost chilli curry that was hot but not crazy. I've also used it as a jerk chicken marinate.

I have only ever used fresh ones... maybe the dried are more bitter?

[Rich Engelhardt]

She probably didn't pound you for chugging the pickle juice...she beat you for putting it back on the shelf! :eek:
LOL!
Yeah - I should have mentioned I did buy the jar eh?

[Rich Riddle]

I visited a mall while traveling a few years ago and it had a hot sauce store, a store only selling extremely hot sauces. If you purchased some of them you had to sign a waiver. I purchased "Dave's Insanity Sauce," but didn't care for the flavor. Do any of these types of mall stores still exist? If so, they likely have this sauce and many more.