Iceland is now selling chicken wings 230 times hotter than a jalapeno

Are you a lover of all things spicy? Just in time for your summer barbecue, Iceland has released some seriously hot chicken wings. ‘Get a pint of milk at the ready’ Simply called Red Hot Chicken Wings, the packaging comes adorned with a cautionary warning to save anyone who might naively assume they’re not that hot. With yellow warning tape wrapped round the design, they have a five chilli heat rating and also a statement which reads, “Red Hot Chicken Wings with Carolina Reaper Chilli - Very Hot.” The 630g bag will cost you £3. One of the reviews on the Iceland website states, “NAUGHTY! Blew my tash off after only 2 wings. Get a pint of milk at the ready because these things are warm!” What’s a Carolina Reaper pepper? A Carolina Reaper pepper is a hybrid of a ghost pepper and a habanero. At one point it held the title of being the hottest chilli pepper in the world, with the World Guinness Book of Records awarding it the accolade in 2013. It has since been surpassed. A man was actually hospitalised in 2018 after eating the raw pepper in a chilli eating contest. How do you measure heat? The Scoville scale is designed to measure the spiciness of a pepper and other spicy foods. The scale measures the amount of a specific chemical compound in spicy food called capsaicin, which produces the heat sensation in humans. The spice is ranked in something called scoville heat units (SHU). For reference, Tabasco hot sauce ranks in at 2,000 SHU, Sriracha between 1,000 - 2,500 SHU and a jalapeno pepper has 3,500 to 8,000 SHU. A Carolina Reaper pepper comes in at an eye watering 1,641,183 SHU on average, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. How to cool down after eating something spicy While your first instinct may be to grab an ice cold glass of water to soothe your fiery taste buds, that’s actually one of the worst things you could do for yourself - all this will do is spread the heat around without doing anything to help. The protein that’s found in milk is actually the best thing to help dampen the flames - a glass of milk, some cold yoghurt or ice cream will all help. This article originally appeared on our sister site Edinburgh Evening News