‘To get the hottest pepper’: Bethel Park grower featured on Hulu’s ‘Superhot’ series

It may not have been a triple-dog dare, but friends of a teenager convinced him to trespass into a Bethel Park yard.

“Hey, jump the fence,” the conversation approximately went. “I know he’s growing peppers over there.”

The kid complied.

“He picks one and starts eating it,” the property owner, Jim Morrow, recalled. “He throws up, and he’s lying on the ground, sweating profusely. I came out and said, ‘So you came into my property.’ And he’s like, ‘What are you going to do to me?’”

Seeing the suffering of the perpetrator after he bit into what very well could have been among the world’s spiciest peppers, Morrow told him:

“I’m not going to do anything. Your punishment’s already this.”

In his persona as Jimmy Pickles — the nickname either is from his hobby of pickling food or a would-be alias for adult films, depending on who tells the story — Morrow has been crossbreeding pepper seeds for about 20 years with some lofty purposes in mind.

“My goal is two things: to get the hottest pepper in the world and to get the best shapes,” he said.

Guinness World Records recognizes Pepper X, bred by South Carolina grower Ed Currie, as having measured 2.69 million Scoville heat units. By comparison, that’s about 336 times the upper reaches of jalapeño levels.

Think about that next time you order an extra beverage to wash down your nachos.

A spot on ‘Superhot’

Regarding Jimmy Pickles’ peppers, his prized product is the JP Piranha, which he said was tested at 1.76 million SHU. He started taking seed orders this month for an August release.

In January, Hulu released a 10-episode series called “Superhot: The Spicy World of Pepper People,” with Morrow among them. Some of the filming took place at his Bethel Park home, which often has plants and seeds taking up space in practically every room.

“I thought it was a scam at first,” he said about being contacted by a representative of content creator High Noon Entertainment. “I get this stuff all the time. I get trolled all the time.”

As it turns out, and as “Superhot” addresses, the world of cultivating peppers is fiercely competitive. And according to Morrow, rivals often attempt to undermine one another.

“Anything I do, people try to discredit me,” he said. “It’s cutthroat, the more you get into it.”

Nevertheless, he auditioned for the series and made the grade, along with “Pepper People” such as musician-turned-grower Troy Primeaux, developer of the 1.79 million-SHU 7 Pot Primo, and subculture superstar Johnny Scoville, whose “Chase the Heat” YouTube channel has 140,000 subscribers.

“I always wanted to go into the entertainment business, anyway,” Morrow said, and in fact, he tried out for some commercials, wrote a script for a stand-up comedy routine and is working on a couple of scripts.

These days, he spends most of time and energy, abetted in the later case by admittedly high intake of coffee, on running Jimmy Pickles Product Line LLC. The specialty, of course, is pepper seeds, with some 700 to 800 varieties at peak inventory.

A major part of the operation involves genetics, with Morrow crossbreeding toward producing optimal hybrids as far as appearance and super-Scoville heat. Key to the process is documentation, which allows him to show exactly how results are achieved, should anyone ask.

‘I went full throttle’

His interest in horticulture dates back to gardening with his late father, James Sr., in their Bethel Park yard.

“We started doing banana peppers, habaneros, some Scotch bonnets, and that was the extent of it,” Jim recalled, but later, “I got more and more into it. And then after college, I went full throttle.”

He worked as a welder before going into the pepper business about nine years ago.

“I stuck with it,” he said. “Other companies collapsed. And my name got bigger and bigger and bigger.”

The sailing hasn’t exactly been smooth.

“Sometimes I get envious of people who go to work for 40 hours a week,” Morrow acknowledged. “You have to sacrifice for gain. You have to go above and beyond.”

He hopes JP Piranha will go above and beyond expectations, and to pave the way, he developed a logo featuring a toothy fish chomping a bright red … well, you can guess.

Along with high-SHU peppers comes the challenge of consuming them, and growers naturally are among those who tend to test the limits of human taste buds.

“As I get older and have been in this industry, I still eat the super-hots, but not like I used to,” Morrow said. “I don’t try every single pepper on every plant, but I try every variety.”

And unlike a certain teenage trespasser, he knows exactly what he’s biting.

For more information, visit www.facebook.com/therealjimmypickles12.