...might be the only thing not manmade or extracted, that is hotter than a Tezpur chili. Tezpur, Assam is a small town in India. The peculiar chili grown there, is a nondescript small green vegetable that packs about 50% more kick than the previous claimant to the crown, the Habanero chile.

How do you measure the heat of a chile? We're so glad you asked. Because it's inconceivable that anyone would sit there and willingly taste these things to measure them, let alone figure out how to rate them. And they are rated...in Scoville units, by a taste-testing panel of five people.

Nearly 100 years ago, Wilbur Scoville devised a way to measure the "heat" in a chile, and it wasn't by degrees on a thermometer. He would take extracts and start diluting them with sugar water, before having the solution tasted by a panel of five people. A pepper's rating on the Scoville scale, corresponded with the ratio of water per part of pepper solution required, before all sensation of heat was eliminated.

On the bottom of the scale, or actually, not even on it, is the sweet bell pepper, which has no heat at all. Next up, is the pimento, which ranges from 100-500 units. Until the Tezpur came along, the Habanero rated a whopping 557,000 units. That was easily surpassed by the Tezpur, which weighed in at 855,000 Scoville units. In comparison, the common pepper spray sold for self-defense, comes in at about two million.