If you’re the sort of person who likes to end a meal with smoke coming out of your ears then you may be tempted to try and get your hands on the recently developed "Pepper X". Be warned, though, this bad boy is the hottest chili pepper on the planet, with a heat rating that smashes the previous record set by the infamous Carolina Reaper.

Grown by Ed Currie of PuckerButt Pepper Company, Pepper X was awarded the Guinness World Record for the spiciest chili in existence after it clocked up 2,693,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU) during tests. For reference, the aforementioned Carolina Reaper - which was also created by Currie and crowned back in 2013 - provides an average of 1,569,300 SHU, which is more than a million units less than this new monstrosity.

The Scoville scale measures the intensity of chili peppers and other spicy foods by determining how much dilution is required to neutralize their heat. In the case of Pepper X, then, it takes almost 2.7 million cups of sugar water to take away the pain contained in one cup of chili extract.

Putting that into context, habanero peppers weigh in with a puny 100,000-350,000 SHU, while jalapeños typically deliver an embarrassing 4,000 to 8,500 SHU.

Like all chilies, Pepper X gets its heat from a molecule called capsaicin, which activates the pain receptors of the mouth and throat when ingested. It’s thought that plants originally developed capsaicin as a means of deterring would-be predators, although humans have since acquired a puzzling taste for piquant condiments, and can even get "high" from eating spicy foods. 

The fiery compound is mainly found in the tissue surrounding a pepper’s seeds, known as the placenta. According to Guinness World Records, the fact that Pepper X is so curved and ridged means the placenta has more space to grow, which may explain how it ended up with so much capsaicin. 

Unfortunately for any masochistic foodies out there, however, Currie isn’t selling Pepper X chilies or seeds, which means the only way to get a taste of this banger is through his hot sauces. Revealing how he created the beast, Currie explained that he spent ten years cross-breeding Carolina Reapers with other “brutally hot” peppers at his farm in Fort Mill, South Carolina. 

After eating a whole Pepper X, Currie said he was “laid out flat on a marble wall for approximately an hour in the rain, groaning in pain.”

Sounds delicious.