New Mexico's other chile: Some like it hot

Trinidad Scorpion Pepper - careful now

From the Carlsbad Current Argus - by Ben Gibson - If you head to the farmers' market on the Eddy County Courthouse lawn you expect to find the usual mix of farmers' freshly picked crops and other foods. You don't expect to find a weaponized form of produce. Meet the Trinidad Scorpion and the woman who grew it, Patricia Monk. "We want to give people something that they can't easily find around here," Monk said. "We want to give them an experience." Monk grows the peppers on her farm in Artesia and has given a few of her co-workers at New Mexico State University Carlsbad's Agriculture Science Center in Artesia a chance to experience the fiery pepper. "I brought some to work, and some of the manly farm men there didn't think it would be too hot," she said. They were in for a surprise. "Two of them took the whole thing and threw it in (their mouths). They were dying trying to be strong to just chew it, but they came back to me later and said that it was the hottest thing they had ever eaten," Monk said. The small pepper can pack a colossal punch of almost 1.4 million Scoville Heat Units, which makes them 140 times hotter than the hottest jalapeño pepper. The Scoville scale is used to deter-mine the amount of the chemical compound capsaicin that is in a pepper. Capsaicin leads to the spicy sensation found chile peppers and other foods. "We're selling them two for a dollar," Monk said. "Proceed with caution." Read more

New Mexico's other chile: Some like it hot