Ghost Pepper Is The Scariest Thing On Halloween Menus This Year

Halloween food has never needed to be all that scary. Give a donut eight icing legs and it’s a spider. Crush some Oreos over a chocolate cake and you’ve got dirt. Add a gummy worm and we might as well be at Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights.

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But this year, a few chains have decided decorations aren’t enough. Ghost pepper is creeping onto menus at Paris Baguette, Dairy Queen, and Taco Bell, which means your Halloween food can now scare you before and after you eat it.

Paris Baguette Put Ghost Pepper In A Donut And Hot Chocolate

From October 1st through November 1st, Paris Baguette is serving two new sweet-and-spicy Halloween treats: the Ghost Pepper Chocolate Marble Mochi Donut and Ghost Pepper Iced Hot Chocolate.

The first is a chewy mochi donut covered in chocolate marble frosting with a “fiery ghost pepper kick.” The second combines chocolate and ghost pepper in an iced hot chocolate.

Chocolate and chile have been friends for a very long time, so that’s not the strange part. It’s the jump straight to ghost pepper. We skipped over jalapeño. We strolled past cayenne. Someone looked at the famously painful pepper and gave it a job at a French bakery.

Dairy Queen Put Ghost Pepper Sauce On Its Halloween Menu

Dairy Queen has found a more conventional home for ghost pepper: chicken.

The chain’s first-ever Halloween collection, the Spellbound Series, runs from September 28th through November 1st and includes a four-piece Chicken Strip Basket served with Ghost Pepper Sauce. The smoky, spicy sauce first arrived at the start of September as part of DQ’s football-season MVP Dip Lineup, so it’s already managed to find a second seasonal job within a month. 

Taco Bell Is Testing a Ghost Pepper Dipping Sauce

Taco Bell isn’t officially billing its Daredevil Double Dipping Burritos as Halloween food, but it is testing Ghost Pepper sauce at the exact time everyone else is putting fake cobwebs on the windows. So I’m counting it.

Available at select Cleveland-area restaurants, the $5.99 meal comes with two snack-sized burritos filled with either grilled steak or slow-roasted chicken, Avocado Ranch, and a three-cheese blend.

The “double dipping” happens with a divided cup. One side holds Ghost Pepper sauce and the other spicy cheesy crisps, so you can dip your burrito into the heat and then give it a crunchy little coat. It’s Shake ‘N Bake for people who don’t fear consequences.

Ghost pepper has lived around wings, hot sauces, and spicy fast food for years, so Taco Bell isn’t the surprising part here. It’s the fact that the same pepper has now wandered into a chocolate mochi donut.

Forget fake blood and gummy worms. Halloween food bites back now.