Hulu’s Superhot Docuseries Fans the Flames of “Pepper People” Passion

According to polling and research, it is thought that roughly two-thirds of all Americans report that they enjoy spicy food, at least on some level. Granted, this no doubt includes many of us who think of “spicy” as a few dashes of Tabasco on our eggs, and probably a few sheepish folks who think of black pepper as a “hot and spicy” addition to their cuisine. Compartmentalize the results further, and you find that about a third of people identify as those who “love” spicy food, and consider themselves aficionados of heat. But Hulu’s new docuseries Superhot: The Spicy World of Pepper People isn’t about that third of the population. This is a deep dive into the much smaller subculture that goes far, far beyond those levels, to the borders of hell itself.

Superhot is dedicated to those spice obsessives who throw themselves willingly into the world of what are referred to as “superhot chiles.” Variously defined as chile pepper breeds that can boast Scoville heat unit scores beyond 500,000 or 1 million, they’re essentially chiles as you or I would know them in the same way that a rocket vehicle blasting across a salt flat at 700 mph is technically a “car.”

Or to put it another way: Have you ever been challenged to eat a habanero, or tasted an all-habanero hot sauce? The average Scoville reading of a ripe habanero is roughly 100,000 to 300,000 Scoville, making it painfully hot, given that a jalapeno tops out around 8,000. The Carolina Reaper, on the other hand, which held the world record for about a decade until recently, weighs in at a verified 1.64 million Scoville. But wait, the pepper arms race is only heating up at this point—the newly unveiled Pepper X, from Carolina Reaper creator “Smokin’” Ed Currie has just recently been named as the new holder of the title, obliterating the previous mark with a score of 2.69 million Scoville. We are talking levels of heat intensity that the average person literally can’t even fathom.

And yet, at various points of the year, hundreds or thousands of superhot aficionados will come together to baptize themselves communally in the fire of capsaicin, gathering at pepper conventions, hot sauce expos or competitions hosted by organizations such as the League of Fire, to revel in their collective agony. That’s really what it’s all about; the shared experience of challenging themselves and the associated high generated by the chile pepper’s endorphin rush. It’s certainly not about flavor, even if a superhot eater might make that claim—if you want the fruitiness of a fresh chile, you can get it from varieties 10 or 20 times less hot. The consumption of superhots is something outside of the culinary world—instead, it reflects a passion for masochism and that endorphin rush, the same sought by practitioners of extreme sports or various more illegal pastimes. Rest assured, though, that the mentality of the superhot consumer generally has more in common with the drug addict than the yuppie foodie. That isn’t hyperbole: the crossover between other forms of substance abuse and superhot pepper fandom is quite real.

This is the world that Hulu’s Superhot: The Spicy World of Pepper People, skillfully directed by Brian Skope, is tenderly exploring. Narrated by an incredulous-sounding Ben Schwartz, the series profiles the subculture as a whole by drilling in on a handful of prominent personalities within it, including both “kingmaker” critics with hundreds of thousands of online followers and upstart pepper growers who haven’t yet sold a bottle of hot sauce in their lives. All are united in a quest to experience the hottest peppers that the world has to offer, and many dream of creating that very pepper themselves, in search of the glory (and money) that comes along with it.

At this point, anyone casually familiar with the pepper world—certainly anyone who has watched the popularity of First We Feast’s YouTube flagship Hot Ones over the years—will likely be pointing to the elephant in the room. That would be pepper grower Ed Currie and his record-holding Carolina Reaper, now replaced on the totem pole by his own Pepper X. Currie does not appear in Superhot, but he is unavoidably referenced on a regular basis by the many growers who make up this colorful cast of characters, and their opinion is probably the one you could guess for yourself: none of them believed that the Carolina Reaper was the hottest chile pepper out there. And wouldn’t you know it, they all tend to think that the peppers they grow should really hold the title.

This is a classic jumping off point for a docuseries about the obsessive limits of hobbyism, particularly compelling given that it’s a hobby that inherently involves electing to inflict vast amounts of pain upon yourself, in search of a certain spicy nirvana. Some of these characters, like longtime grower and widely respected pepper expert Troy Primeaux, have been in the game for decades and are pursuing the chile world as a commercial venture, hoping to build enough hype for their creations (like his diabolically-hot 7 Pot Primo Chile) to secure its use in more lucrative ventures, like the large-scale world of commercial snack foods. Others, like charmingly earnest nurse Aurea DeGuzman, are just starting out on the professional side of the hobby, making the leap from passionate home gardener to budding hot sauce merchant. She stands out as perhaps the most purely likable personality among the bunch, fronting an Instagram account heavily featuring her peppers, her dog, and Filipino ancestry, a combination she refers to as “Chilipino.” An early episode features Aurea effectively “coming out” to her nurse friends by revealing her chile pepper and hot sauce obsession, which she seems to fear might somehow be seen as shameful or strange. But by the time she’s successfully selling her first bottles of hot sauce, it’s heartwarming to watch the neophyte being welcomed into the larger chilehead community.

No one has a more endearing love for her plants than Aurea DeGuzman.