The Naga Family of Chillis

There has been a lot of myth and rumour around the Naga Chilli for many years which I wish to try to cut through and present the facts as I know them.

We have been dealing in the various Naga Varieties for 10 years and this will be the 8th year we will be growing them. We now grow them about as far south as you can go in Spain practically on the Gibralter border with Spain. We have started growing Naga there due to the longer season and higher temperatures which enables the ripe Naga pods to reach their potentail and last season our Naga strain, that was being grown under cover, was measured at 1,086,844 which was a little higher than the Naga grown at the Chillipepper Institute in New Mexico which is the current holder of the Guiness World Record of the worlds hottest chilli. We plan to pursue this record this year as we feel we can get the heat up even higher.
We were also growing an outside crop of Naga which was measured at 794,235 which is a phenominal heat for an outdoors grown chilli. It seems that Southern Spain is a great place to grow the Naga chilli.

In 1999 I discovered an extremely hot chilli in a Bangladeshi shop in Brighton which the shop owner wanted me to try. We had been buying scotch bonnets and cayenne from him for some time and he had come across an extra hot chilli that he called the Naga. I had of course never heard of it and they were very expensive at 20p each. I couldnt believe the heat of them but had no idea that the Bangladeshi Naga was far hotter than the scotch bonnets I was buying. Partly because they burn in a different way. Instead of the heat hitting hard and dissapearing after 10 minutes or so the little Naga chilli just kept going.
I started buying as many as I could and was making a pesto type sauce called Zhoug with them.
I was soon spending £60 a week on Naga Chillis alone. Orders had to be placed by friday evening which were then wired to Bangladesh and they would fly them in on the Saturday flight and I could pick them up on monday.
We began to get a reputation for making sauces that were far hotter than anything else on the market and we certainly got through a lot of Naga chillis in those days.

We moved houses in 2001 and the house came with a polytunnel already built so I started growing chillis. I managed to germinate a few naga seeds. They came green so I had to ripen them myself. Over the next few years I selected the best pods to go on til the next year and gradually developed the strain that we are now growing in Spain.

It must have been 2000 that I saw a newsround article about a superhot chilli that had been found in Northern India that of course turned out to be the Naga Jolokia.

In Bangladesh they are known as Naga chillis because the original chillis came from the Naga Hills where they have been grown for many generations. They are also now grown in Assam in huge quantities from seed originating again in the Naga hills. There is a reason for them being called Naga chillis.

The various strains are a little different but basically the same chilli grown in the hills of Nagaland. Having grown all the various varieties over the last few years it is obvious that the whole range are closely related and vary a little in size and flavour. I believe the flavour is affected by the environmental conditions as much as the final heat.

Unfortunately the original Bangladeshi Naga has now deteriorated and are small and dare I say mild in heat. The last ones we had tested came in at a little under 400,000shus. In the past year there has been a real shortage of Naga grown in Bangladesh and Assam due to a fungal disease which has decimated the crops of many small growers. This has caused a sharp rise in price and some companies are now charging 50% more than last year.
The Nagaland crop has been plentiful this season but it has had to go a long way.
To complicate matters the Indian government have decided to make a biological weapon using the Naga chilli and have bought up many tonnes for their development.
This brings us to the history as I understand it of the origin of the Naga chilli.

The Naga chilli has been around for many generations and the folk story goes that they have been used for all sorts of ailments for centuries. I believe from talking to many people involved in the export and growing of Naga that they originated several centuries ago having been brought into the area by one of the many missionaries that traveled throughout India to convert the tribes. The Naga is uncannily similar in looks to the Fatalii which the Portuguese carried to and grew in central Africa around the same time.
I can only presume that with selective breeding the Naga was gradually over the years grew hotter and hotter. There are tales of the tribes using the Naga as a biological weapon in intertribal warfare where heads would be taken as trophys. Whether the Naga chilli was bred for this purpose we may never know.

The supplier that we use now is based in Nagaland and produce some of the best quality Naga pods I have ever seen so try out our top quality Naga.

Due to the UKs contact with India and Bangladesh it has meant that we are at the forefront of Naga delvelopment and it has given us a thriving chilli culture which is ahead of the world at this time. I dont know the statistics but since we started making zhoug and playing around with Naga chillis the chilli trade has mushroomed in the UK and it now supports many chilli companies and several chilli festivals of one kind or another.