Today we'd like to look at one of our favorite peppers: the amazingly hot and tasty Bhut Jolokia, aka the Ghost Pepper! This pepper is often overlooked since so many hotter, more vicious ones have risen to prominence over the last decade or so. We sincerely believe ghost peppers need to be revered as they were probably one of the first to really open the public's eyes to extreme hot sauces and garnered new attention from heat seekers and pepper-heads from across the globe. Let's dive in and really understand what the ghost pepper taste has to offer.
Ghost Pepper Flavor Is Where It's Truly at!
Hot is hot. If you want to melt your face off, there's endless ways to do it. Whether you are looking for the freshest, spiciest pepper ever or you are adding single drops of extract to huge pots of food, you can always get that endorphin rush you're chasing. If all you care about is finding the hottest thing you can handle and then pushing past it, the ghost pepper isn't going to cut it anymore.
This spooky pepper was, at one time, an anomaly, a horticultural adventure for the brave, or just a hilariously painful segment from some poor day-time news correspondent who drew the short straw. We were happy with our jalapenos and shivered at the idea of habaneros. Hot sauce was a fun, maybe a bit too vinegary, novelty. Don't get us wrong, tons of folks loved and cherished their favorites and enjoyed looking around for the locally made bottle while on vacation, but not too many people were hunting the hottest of the hot. This was all long before small-batch hot sauces with crazy names and unique ingredients took over the world!
Our personal experience with the ghost pepper probably sums up many sauce makers' experiences fairly accurately.
We had been making habanero sauces with our original, super-tasty blend of carrots, mandarin oranges, and tomatoes for some time (check out our still-to-this-day wildly popular originals like Sultry or Slaughter to get an idea) and couldn't get the ghost pepper fast enough once we'd heard of it. We gave it a nibble and, while we almost keeled over, that signature ghost pepper flavor immediately grabbed us by the tastebuds. We knew we could make something brilliant with this amazing pepper.
A True Classic Never Fails
As we've already covered, the ghost pepper was one of the first widely known super-hots but has since been surpassed in heat many times over. The problem with that is, many just getting into the world of sauces and peppers skip right over it. We really believe this to be a travesty since, at least compared to all the crazy-spicy peppers we've tasted over the years, the ghost is truly one of the most delicious! Our Zombie Apocalypse wing sauce is STILL in our top five best-selling sauces of all time and, while we'd love to take 100 percent of the credit for being masters of our craft, we have to give a good deal back to the ghost pepper taste itself. It's just SO GOOD!
Ghost Pepper vs Carolina Reaper
Anyone who's anyone in the hot sauce community knows the huge impact the Carolina Reaper has had as well as Pepper X (no, we won't be getting into it...). For those chasing that burn and keeping it extract-free, these are the peppers you want. There's simply no denying that they are (some of) the hottest peppers you can get your hands on. For many, this is all they are looking for and we have zero problems there. The ghost pepper is just a footnote to these heat misers, which makes perfect sense.
However, what if we ignore the Scoville factor for a moment? What if we took both peppers and judged them on flavor alone? In our opinion, and in many of your opinions when you chat with us at shows and festivals, there's no comparison. The ghost wins, more often than not.
We like the Carolina Reaper for it's heat and for a certain aspects of its flavor, but you'll often find in our sauces we will add another pepper (or TONS of garlic) to keep the taste more in tune with how we like things. The reaper tends to have a very floral, almost perfumy, taste that can really cut through most other flavors and be overbearing. It's definitely not something we want a lot of.
The ghost, on the other hand has a rich, full flavor with far less acidity and even can become a bit creamy when oil is added. The heat is slower to kick in, too, which lets other parts of a sauce it's used in come forward before your mouth alights and you crumple, crying to the floor. For us at least, it's a no brainer.
The Ghost Pepper Takes the (Hot) Cake!
Did you make it all the way down here? Amazing! We know these things can get a bit lengthy but you have to give it to us: we are passionate! It's nice to sing the praises of one of our most cherished peppers. Maybe just one of you will take a second and consider giving a ghost pepper sauce a spot in your collection the next time you go shopping. Maybe you'd like to try OUR ghost pepper sauces? You can take a gander if you are so inclined.
Thanks for reading and stay spicy, everyone!
