Spicy food can be extremely polarizing. There are some who absolutely love it and some who wouldn’t touch a chili pepper if their lives depended on it.
Some people just love a little kick here and there, but there are some people who really live for spicy food, and enjoy it even when it gets a little (or a lot) painful.
Buffalo Wild Wings’ Blazin’ Wings is just one of those things that have piqued the interest of many spice-lovers.
How Many Scovilles Do Blazin’ Buffalo Wild Wings Have?
The ghost pepper-based sauce of Blazin’ Buffalo Wild Wings has 350,000 Scoville units, which means they are 60x spicier than jalapeño peppers. The newer Blazin’ sauce is made with Carolina Reapers, the world’s hottest pepper, which boasts 2,000,000 Scoville Heat Units.
What Kind of Pepper Is In Blazin’ Buffalo Wild Wings Sauce?
The original Buffalo Wild Wings Blazin’ Sauce is a spicy sauce that has 350,000 SHU, and is a ghost pepper-based sauce. Ghost peppers may not be the spiciest peppers in the world (the top spot is currently held by the Carolina Reaper), but with a Scoville rating of about 1,000,000, it certainly isn’t mild!
Now that measurement is for the dried, pure chili peppers. If we’re talking about a sauce with other ingredients, it’s going to have other ingredients which will dilute its effect. And if the sauce uses actual chili peppers vs. extracts, their SHU number will be higher on the scale.
A value of 350,000 is certainly no small matter, especially if your chicken wings are well-covered and doused in the sauce.
What Are the Ingredients in Blazin’ Buffalo Wild Wings Sauce?
The label of the Blazin’ Buffalo Wild Wings sauce lists the following ingredients: water, cayenne red pepper, distilled vinegar, hot chili sauce, salt, soybean oil, natural flavors, cornstarch, dehydrated habanero peppers, dehydrated ghost peppers, dehydrated jalapeño peppers, flavorings, and preservatives.
It is advertised as a ghost-pepper-based sauce, however, we can see that it includes other types of peppers as well.
What is Buffalo Wild Wings’ Hottest Sauce?
Currently, the hottest sauce in Buffalo Wild Wings’ repertoire is the Blazin’ Carolina Reaper sauce. This replaced the original Blazin’ sauce in 2021.
The sauce highlights the addition of Carolina Reapers, which according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is currently the world’s hottest pepper with an average rating of about 1,500,000 SHU but can reach upwards of 2,000,000 SHU.
This sauce is not for the faint-hearted and is what is used for the famous Blazin’ Challenge.
What is The Scoville Scale?
The Scoville Scale is a measurement of how hot, spicy or pungent a chili pepper is, depending on the concentration of compounds called capsaicinoids. These compounds are responsible for giving peppers their heat or spiciness. The one measured here is the “burning sensation” you feel in your mouth, which is caused by these compounds.
A pepper that has high amounts of capsaicinoids will be spicier and hotter than peppers with low concentrations of these compounds. There are many different capsaicinoids in peppers, but the most common capsaicinoid is capsaicin.
The scale was invented by an American pharmacist in 1912 by the name of Wilbur Scoville and the unit of measurement used is the Scoville Heat Unit or SHU.
The Scoville scale is not just used to measure the heat of the actual chili pepper, but products in which those chili peppers are used. For example, the spiciness of Blazin’ Buffalo Wild Wings Sauce can be determined using the Scoville scale, as well as the hotness of Flamin’ Hot Doritos. If you are curious about the latter, you may check out the article How Hot Are Flamin’ Hot Doritos In Scoville on the site.
What Are Scoville Heat Units?
The Scoville Scale measures the concentration of capsaicinoids in the chili pepper, and the value assigned to the pepper by way of Scoville Heat Units or SHU reflects the number of times that the specific chili pepper needs to be diluted in a solution of sugar water before that heat is neutralized.
For example, a Serrano Pepper with 10,000 SHU means that a teaspoon of ground serrano peppers would take around 10,000 teaspoons of sugar water for the burning sensation it causes to disappear or not be detected.
The higher the value in SHU, the higher the rate of dilution and the spicier and hotter the pepper.
How are Scoville Heat Units Determined?
Wilbur Scoville was the one who devised the test to arrive at this dilution ratio per pepper type. Known as The Scoville Organoleptic Test, it involved producing an alcohol-based extract from the chili peppers and then mixing it with a sugar-water mixture, and then having his professional taste testers drink the solution.
He adjusted the amount of sugar water in the mixture in a standardized way and the participants had to keep drinking the solution until such a point is reached that they cannot detect the heat of the peppers anymore.
At this neutral point, the SHU value or amount of sugar water needed to neutralize the effect of the pepper is then determined.
This method has its obvious limitations, such as taste tester fatigue and subjective perceptions of spiciness.
After a period of drinking chili pepper solutions, taste buds can become accustomed to the heat, and therefore lead the taste testers to assign a milder heat rating to a pepper that is actually hotter. Also, spiciness can be subjective and perceptions of it can vary from person to person.
Despite this, no one can deny that Scoville’s innovation and attempt to quantify the burning question (ha!), of how spicy a chili pepper is is actually pretty amazing.
Modern Methods
Today, there are other ways to test the spiciness of chili peppers instead of relying on just trained taste testers.
A popular modern method is called HPLC or High-Performance Liquid Chromatography.
According to National Institute of Standards and Technology, this process involves the use of pumps containing a pressurized liquid that contains the chili pepper samples that pass through a column of solid adsorbent material.
This process isolates all the different compounds in the sample, including the compound of interest, capsaicin. With the capsaicin isolated, it then becomes easier for scientists to measure and quantify the amount of capsaicin present in a pepper.
The resulting amounts are measured in American Spice Trade Association Pungency Units, however, these are converted into SHU or Scoville Heat Units.
Despite the change in methodology, the Scoville Scale is still the scale we use to measure the pungency of chili peppers today.
Technology is actually pretty amazing, and it makes you appreciate how easy it is for us to know stuff nowadays. Imagine if we still had to do it how Wilbur Scoville did it back in the day. I don’t think any human tester would survive the test, with our spiciest peppers now sitting at millions of SHU.
Imagine being on a tasting panel for Carolina Reapers and having to drink a solution of pepper and sugar water until you can’t detect the heat anymore. I would long pass out before we ever reach such a state!
Different Types of Peppers Ranked According to the Scoville Scale
The hottest peppers in the world are the Pepper X at 3,180,000 SHU and the Dragon’s Breath at 2,500,000. However, the official hottest pepper in the world as recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records is the Carolina Reaper, with 2,200,000 SHU. The mildest peppers are Sweet Bell Peppers with 0 SHU.
SCOVILLE HEAT SCALE FOR PEPPERS
| PEPPER | SHU |
| Pepper X | 3,180,000 |
| Dragon's Breath | 2,500,000 |
| Carolina Reaper | 1,500,000 - 2,300,000 |
| Trinidad Scorpion | 1,000,000 - 2,000,000 |
| Ghost Pepper | 855,000 - 1,041,427 |
| Red Savina Habanero | 350,000 - 577,000 |
| Habanero | 100,000 - 350,000 |
| Thai | 50,000 - 100,000 |
| Cayenne Pepper | 30,000 - 50,000 |
| Serrano | 10,000 - 23,000 |
| Hungarian | 5,000 - 10,000 |
| Jalapeño | 2,500 - 8,000 |
| Rocotillo | 1,500 - 2,500 |
| Poblano | 1,000 - 1,500 |
| Anaheim | 600 - 1,000 |
| Pimiento | 100 - 500 |
| Bell Pepper | 0 |
| National Institute of Standards and Technology |
Other types of peppers fall in between that spectrum, with jalapeños closer to the milder end and habaneros and ghost peppers climbing near the top of the list.
Frequently Asked Questions to How Many Scovilles Do Blazin’ Buffalo Wild Wings Have?
What is the Buffalo Wild Wings Blazin’ Challenge?
It is a challenge to eat 10 Carolina Reaper wings in 5 minutes or less, without breaks or drinks. Winners get bragging rights, their name up on the Blazin’ Challenge Wall of Fame, and are awarded rewards points from the restaurant.
What are the Hottest Buffalo Wild Wings Sauces?
The Blazin’ Carolina Reaper sauce, Wild Sauce, and Mango Habanero sauce are among the establishment’s hottest sauces. The Dessert Heat Seasoning is its hottest dry seasoning.
Conclusion to How Many Scovilles Do Blazin Buffalo Wild Wings Have?
The older Blazin’ Buffalo Wild Wings sauce made with ghost peppers has 350,000 Scoville units, which makes them 60x hotter than jalapeño peppers.
The newer Blazin’ sauce is much spicier as it contains the world’s hottest pepper, Carolina Reaper, which has a Scoville rating of around 2,000,000.