Daebak Ghost Pepper is Spiciest Instant Ramen in the World? Wu Yah Boh? Real or Not?

Buddy Mark gifted me this Ghost Pepper Spicy Chicken Dry Black Noodles in a cup. Thanks buddy! "Drink some milk before you eat this" he kindly cautioned 😊

They say that if jalapeño is spicy level 8,000 Scoville heat units, ghost pepper is spicy level 1,000,000 SHU 😱 The cup is peppered with intimidating words like daring, fear, challenge, flaming, madness, warning, pray hard, risk etc.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Ghost pepper is a hybrid of capsicum from northeast India. It is 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce. Guinness Book of Records crowned it the hottest chili in the world in 2007 but it was dethroned in 2011. The title of the hottest chili in the world changes every few years with ever hotter hybrids created 😱

I eat raw chili pepper as a condiment since I was a child. Still, I felt a little intimidated and left the cup in the cabinet till today. Famish and practising social distancing due to COVID-19, I finally popped open the cup of Ghost Pepper instant noodle.

Inside the cup, there's a brick of dark colour instant ramen noodle, a sachet of sauce and also a disposable plastic fork.

The instruction says add hot water and let it soak for 4 minutes.

Drain away the water and squeeze in the sauce. There's about 2 tablespoons worth - I squeezed in everything.

How was it?

Flavour is a blend of robust savoury spicy sweet. The noodles were tender spongy springy, typical of instant ramen. A subtle taste of wheat. Not much, if any grease.

The spiciness was at about level 8/10 to my palate. The heat lingered on the tongue and throat, rising gradually to 9/10. Towards the end, I found myself breathing just a bit quicker, panting a little with tongue sticking out slightly, trying to ventilate my mouth to get some relieve from the spicy heat.

My eyes wetted a little, they were welling up on the verge of tearing but did not. As I was finishing the noodles, my salivary glands kicked in on overdrive sending more saliva to the mouth to try and dilute the heat.

I finished the noodles without bursting the 10/10 red line. Drank a cup of room temperature water and the spicy heat receded about 10 - 15 minutes later. My stomach warmed a little but there was no pain.

Years ago at a street side pho stall in Ho Chi Minh City, I ate a lot of that fresh, crunchy, chili pepper together with my beef noodle soup. Darned..... afterwards, it felt like the heat burned a hole in my stomach and the pain went away only after at least an hour. This Ghost Pepper Ramen is nothing like that. I have no idea what chili that was in Vietnam, though - it was innocent looking light green in colour, like small bell peppers.