Iceland is selling ‘hottest ever pizza’ – but shopper says you’ll need milk and toilet roll on hand
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ICELAND'S "scarily spicy" pizza has been named as the "hottest ever" by one shopper who thinks you'll need milk and toilet roll on standby if you eat it.
The retailer's own-brand "" launched last year and is topped with spicy cooked chicken breast as well red and green jalapeno peppers.
The 359g pizza, which costs £1.50, even comes with a warning emblazoned on the front of the packet saying "extremely hot", plus it has a five chilli rating.
But Mike Haywood, 30, from Swindon - who says he's comfortable with a spicy vindaloo curry - "struggled" to eat the pizza and only managed to get through three quarters of it.
The engineering technician told The Sun: "After the first bite I thought this is quite nice, then after 10seconds it kicked in, and after a minute or two
I grabbed the milk but even the milk couldn't help too much.
"The heat lasted 20minutes and I had instant stomach cramps that lasted most of the night."
What's on Iceland's Scarily Spicy pizza?
HERE'S the list of ingredients in Iceland's pizza:
- Dried red bell pepper, chilli powder, cayenne pepper, black pepper, capsicum extract, paprika extract
- Cooked spicy chicken (chicken breast, sunflower oil, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, sugar, dried red bell pepper, cayenne pepper, chilli powder, black pepper, jalapeño pepper powder, capsicum extract, paprika extract
- Habanero chilli powder
- Jalapeño Peppers (green jalapeño peppers, red jalapeño peppers)
- Red and green pepper flakes
Wife Polly-Marie, 28, a teaching assistant only dipped her finger into the sauce before determining it was far too spicy for her.
She was the one who initially picked up the savoury snack in her local The Food Warehouse by Iceland store for Mike to devour as she knows he can usually handle the heat.
Mike admits he tucks into Iceland's Carolina reaper chicken breast fillet chunks "like they're popcorn".
He's also enjoyed the supermarket's Carolina reaper chicken breast fillet strips and wings in the past despite some saying they're so hot you need to wear gloves to eat them.
These are all part of Iceland's "Scarily Spicy" range, which is why Mike thought the pizza with its jalapenos would be a breeze in comparison.
Carolina reaper chillies are 200 times hotter than jalapenos, according to Iceland.
It's also widely regarded as one of the hottest chillies you can get, although there are different versions of the Scoville scale, which is used to measure the heat of peppers.
Polly-Marie posted pictures of Mike struggling to remain composed while eating the pizza on the writing: "The hottest pizza we have every tried from Iceland for only £1.50.
"My husband can handle hot food but his face says it all in these pictures. When buying this pizza, ensure you buy lots of milk and toilet roll."
The post has since wracked up more than 3,300 likes and over 6,500 comments.
One person commented: "It’s a belter! Tastes really good and packs quite a kick."
While someone else added: "It's a scorcher; it tastes hotter then a lamb phall curry from an Indian place. I got to the last slice and gave up."
So, would Mike go back for round two? Somewhat surprisingly the answer is yes. "I would buy it again if there was social event with friends to have a laugh about trying it," he said.
Morrisons, Sainsbury's, and Tesco all sell spicy chicken pizzas but none keep with heat warnings or appear to contain any particularly spicy chillies. Morrisons' (320g) costs £2, Sainsbury's (388g) is £1.50, and Tesco's (410g) is £4.50.
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If you want to spice up your life, Iceland is also selling what it claims to be the UK's hottest supermarket burger.
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David Lennox, head chef at Iceland, said: “Our pizza is baked on volcanic stone from Mount Etna itself, so it’s no wonder that customers have found it blisteringly hot!”
“But if shoppers think the pizza was hot, just wait and see what we’ve got launching next week. It certainly won’t be for the faint-hearted.”