World's hottest chile!

Move over habenero and Bhut Jolokia, there's a new chile in town, and it's vying for the title of "world's hottest." The New Mexico Scorpion chile, a U.S.grown version of the scorchingly hot Trinidad Scorpion  claims to have the highest Scoville score on record, and the owners of El Pinto Restaurant & Cantina restaurant in Albuquerque have scooped up the entire crop to produce a limited quantity of El Pinto Scorpion Salsa. They're debuting the firey stuff Friday at the annual Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show in Albuquerque.

The Scorpion is no joke, its producers are petitioning Guinness World Records to name it the "world's hottest chile pepper." (The current title holder is the Naga Viper.) Some perspective: The searingly hot Bhut Jolokia, Guinness says it's the third-hottest chile, has between 600,000 and 700,000 Scoville Heat Units. The Scorpion can top that with a whopping 1,191,595 Scoville Heat Units. (A Scoville unit is calculated based on how many drops of water it takes to remove a chile's heat.)

Jim Garcia, El Pinto's director of operations, on the Scorpion. Mentioned that only 552 jars of the "Scorpion Salsa" were produced, and just 337 of them will be sold at the Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show for a jaw-dropping price of $55 each (some of the proceeds will go to the New Mexico Chile Institute, which works to cultivate the finest chile plants in the world; and a "Scorpion Salsa" T-shirt is included). Another 175 jars will be sold on urbandaddy.com.

To make the salsa, miniscule amounts of Scorpion were mixed with chocolate habaneros and El Pinto's standard salsa mix. "We mixed it with tomatoes so people can actually eat it," says Sarah Chavez, who handles El Pinto's sales and marketing. "When you dip it with the chip, you're only going to want to put a little bit on it," she cautions.