Trinidad Moruga Scorpion

The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion held the Guinness World Record for hottest pepper in 2012, averaging 1.2 million SHU with peaks exceeding 2 million. Named after the village of Moruga in Trinidad, this superhot features a distinctive scorpion-tail point and delivers a delayed but devastating heat that builds intensely over several minutes. Despite its extreme pungency, it offers a surprisingly fruity, almost sweet flavour before the heat overwhelms.

History & lineage

The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion took the Guinness World Record for hottest chilli in February 2012, when researchers at New Mexico State University's Chile Pepper Institute confirmed an average heat of 1.2 million SHU and individual pods exceeding 2 million. The variety dethroned the Bhut Jolokia, which had held the record since 2007. The pepper takes its name from Moruga, a small fishing village on Trinidad's southern coast where it has been cultivated for generations as a household garden chilli. Trinidad and Tobago has a long superhot tradition - the island's climate, soil, and longstanding cultivation of Capsicum chinense varieties has produced a remarkable concentration of high-SHU peppers, including the Trinidad Scorpion family, the 7 Pot family, and various local crosses. The defining shape - a knobbly pod with a small pointed tail at the base, resembling a scorpion's sting - gave the broader scorpion family its name. The tail is functional in flavour terms too: the seed-and-placenta-rich tail concentrates the highest capsaicin levels, meaning the heat builds slowly and intensely as you eat through the pod toward the tail. Its record was held for less than a year. By 2013, the Carolina Reaper had taken the title, but the Moruga Scorpion remains a benchmark among growers for its combination of extreme heat with genuinely complex fruity flavour - which is why it still appears prominently in superhot sauces despite no longer holding the record.

Culinary uses

Used extremely sparingly in hot sauces, pepper sprays, and extreme heat challenges. Best suited for making superhot hot sauces where only drops are needed, or for adding intense heat to large batches of chili or stews. Often dried and ground into powder for controlled heat application.

Growing it in the UK

Chinense is the slow one. Seed can take three weeks to germinate and wants steady warmth to do it, so sow in January or February with a heated propagator and expect to ripen the fruit under cover. Germination is given as 7-21 days. 90 days to maturity is an ordinary season here — sow in February and it will ripen without a fight.

At 90–120 cm this is a substantial plant. Give it a 10-litre pot or a greenhouse border, and stake it before the fruit sets rather than after. The record puts the yield at heavy, so start feeding weekly with something high in potassium as soon as the first fruit sets — a plant carrying that much will run out of steam otherwise.

This is superhot territory, and the handling advice is not decorative: wear gloves when cutting it, keep your hands away from your eyes for the rest of the day, and open a window before frying it — capsaicin in hot oil will clear a kitchen. Thin walls and a high drying score mean it dries well — thread the pods on a string somewhere warm and they will keep for a year.

Read from this variety's own record — the figures are in the panel opposite.