Fried Chicken

Bright citrus and grapefruit-forward opening, deep floral mid-palate, and a subtle earthy sweetness inherited from the Bubblegum parent; overall slightly sweet and earthy beneath the heat.

The Fried Chicken is a Capsicum chinense superhot hybrid created in Italy by Rocco Maltesi around 2016–2017 as a cross between the blistered-texture 7 Pot Bubblegum (BBG7 Orange / BBG Mammp) and the fruity-floral Jay’s Peach Ghost Scorpion. Originally released as BubbleSkin or Bubblegum Skin for its extreme pod surface, it was renamed Fried Chicken around 2023 when community photos showed the deeply contorted, bumpy, orange-ripening pods looking uncannily like crispy fried-chicken skin and batter. Pods measure 5–7 cm, start green, finish a vivid fried-chicken-batter orange, are rounded at the shoulder and taper to a pronounced scorpion tail, with moderate wall thickness and high oil content. Plants are tall and vigorous (often exceeding 1.5 m), heavy-yielding, and require a long warm season of roughly 100–140 days. Heat is consistently superhot at 850 000–1 500 000 SHU with lab readings just over 1 million; flavor opens citrus-grapefruit, moves into floral notes, and finishes with earthy sweetness. Still partially unstable, so some phenotypic variation in texture intensity, heat, and plant size is expected.

Around 2016–2017 Italian master breeder Rocco Maltesi crossed the extreme-texture 7 Pot Bubblegum (BBG7 Orange) with Jay’s Peach Ghost Scorpion, initially calling the result BubbleSkin or Bubblegum Skin. Seeds circulated quietly among elite growers from about 2018. In 2023 photos shared by growers including Jeff Hobbs and Alex Casillas went viral in chili communities because the gnarly, blistered, orange pods looked uncannily like crispy fried-chicken skin and batter; the new name stuck. The variety remains partially unstable with some plant-to-plant variation.