Launceston's Regan Parkinson just loves chillies

Self-confessed chilli-fanatic Regan Parkinson loves the burn.

He has eaten several varieties of the world's super hot chillies, adds chilli to most of his meals, and chews raw chillies whilst working in his garden.

Mr Parkinson said he is addicted, always in search of the next hot buzz. 

"A lot of chillies have a fruity, citrusy flavour.  You have a few seconds to appreciate it before you get slammed with the heat," he said.

"Over the course of a few years I've built up a tolerance but I've also stitched myself up a few times.  When you get nailed by the really hot stuff you get a natural high, a natural endorphin rush."

When chillies are eaten by humans their active ingredient capsaicin triggers a pain response in the brain which believes the mouth is on fire.

Endorphins are released to block the body's pain receptors and dopamine stimulates a pleasure response; both are believed to bring chilli lovers back to their bowls of heat. 

But Mr Parkinson said he also eats chillies because of their health benefits and swears by their power to ward off the lurgy. 

"chillies have eight times the amount of vitamin C as what oranges do.  I have felt something coming on and gone straight to the supermarket, bought orange juice and a handful of birds eye chillies, then eat them raw.  No cold has surfaced." 

There are various international studies that have proved this point, where eating chilli at least once a week has been shown to lower risk of cancer, diabetes and heart disease. 

Such health-benefits are a bonus for bona fide addicts, who are seemingly obsessed with the race to grow the hottest chillies.

Author Andy Lynes in his book How to be a Chilli Head argues that the eating and growing of chillies has attained cult status.

He labels it the "Modern Chilli Head culture", found in countries such as the US, Europe and Australia where chilli is not a mainstream food.

Lynes writes that it started to seriously develop in the late 1980s when the first chilli sauce store opened in the US, followed by the creation of Blair's Death Sauce in 1994, and the cultivation of the first super hot chilli the Red Savina.

"Chillies now take their place alongside a very select band of foods, such as caviar, white truffles and Wagyu beef, that are capable of creating genuine excitement," Lynes writes.

The Guinness World Records lists the hottest chilli, a title that is currently held by the Carolina Reaper.

In 2017 this spicy gem set the bar at 1,641,183 Scoville Heat Units (SHU), but other tests state it sits at more than 2 million SHU.

Mr Parkinson explains that a Scoville unit measures the amount of sugared water needed to totally suppress the heat from a chilli.

"So under the Scoville scale, one unit of chilli rated at one million Scoville units would need one million units of sugared water to suppress the heat."

As a heat-rating guide to the inexperienced, jalapenos sit between 2500 and 8000 SHU, chipotles sit between 5000 and 8000 SHU, commercial-grade capsicum spray sits between two and five million SHU, while undiluted capsaicin sits at 16 million. 

"I grew some Carolina Reapers and I was quite disappointed.  It really all depends on how they are grown, the temperatures they are exposed to, and the fertilisers," he said.

"In my opinion, the Chocolate Scorpion [a hybrid of the second hottest chilli Trinidad Moruga Scorpion] was far hotter."

While official testings have precise measurements sometimes it just comes down to the individual hot head. 

"I ate the Scorpion and in the first few minutes, I was chewing away thinking 'this is a nice flavour, very fruity', but I was also thinking 'aren't these meant to be hotter?  Then it started to hit me and it built and built and all of a sudden I could feel my heart racing. I started sniffing and hiccupping, and my eyes and nose were running," he said.

"I was in a lot of pain for about half an hour afterwards." 

Mr Parkinson grows chillies in special polytunnels in his backyard, and has a business selling super hot chilli flakes, powders and grinder mixes under the banner Flamin' Devil. 

"They are beautiful things to grow, producing some amazing colours and shapes," he said.

"Although the plants do like heat to grow they also don't like ridiculously hot temperatures.  Anecdotally people say that chillies grown in cooler climates produce a bit more heat, and that is because they grow and mature slowly."

This season he has grown 23 different varieties, all of which "rank well-up in the heat scale", including several varieties of the Ghost Chilli, and Seven Pot Chilli, so named because one chilli is enough to heat seven pots of stew.

Mr Parkinson believes this year he may have grown his hottest chilli on record - a pink-hued cross-breeds described as "savage", that resulted from collecting the seeds from past super-hot chillies. 

"We might come out with a Flamin' Devil yet."

Whilst growing chillies is rewarding for Mr Parkinson, the processing of them has proved hazardous.

"When you are crushing and making the chilli powders they are so damn hot that you have to wear gloves, safety glasses and a respiratory mask," he said.

"I've had powder in my eyes a couple of times, learnt the hard way.  You can't use your eyes for 20 minutes and have to stand under the shower trying to wash it out, sneezing like a maniac."

And any hot tips for would-be chilli heads dabbling in the super chilli cult?

"Tread cautiously, work out what you can and can't handle, have a glass of milk handy, and don't ever eat super hot chilli on an empty stomach."