Chile lovers rejoice. It’s now possible to fire up your favorite dishes while helping raise money for NMSU’s Chile Pepper Institute – just make sure some firefighters are standing by.

Holy Jolokia hot sauce, produced by CaJohns Fiery Foods, is made from Bhut Jolokia chile peppers, certified by the Chile Pepper Institute and confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the hottest peppers on the planet.

“I think this is a fun product and it brings a lot of publicity to New Mexico State University,” says Paul Bosland, director of the Chile Pepper Institute and widely recognized as the world’s foremost authority on chile peppers. “It helps further cement New Mexico as the chile capital of the world.”

Bhut Jolokia peppers have a rating of more than one million Scoville Heat Units. That’s nearly twice as hot as Red Savina, the pepper previously labeled as the world’s hottest. As a reference, New Mexico green chile contains about 1,500 SHUs and an average jalapeño measures about 10,000.

“We didn’t want to make it too hot, because we wanted people to enjoy it and be able to taste the uniqueness of the Bhut Jolokia,” Bosland says.

This is the first time the Chile Pepper Institute has partnered with a private company to make a chile product. A five-ounce bottle of Holy Jolokia retails for $10 and is available by calling (575) 646-3028 or visiting www.chilepepperinstitute.org or www.cajohns.com.

A portion of the sales will help the Chile Pepper Institute in raising $10 million for an endowed chair in chile pepper research and to establish a new, expanded Chile Pepper Institute facility featuring a tourist venue; conference, seminar and teaching rooms; a sustainable teaching and demonstration garden; and a state-of-the-art greenhouse.