Yash Amin grows the world's hottest chillies in the backyard of his Mt Eden home.

It looks like a harmless green pepper but its searing heat induces tears, sweat and sizzles the lining of your mouth.

The Carolina Reaper is the world's hottest chilli and Yash Amin has them growing in his backyard in Auckland.

"I'm used to handling hot chillies but it's really, really hot," the Mt Eden resident says.

ELESHA EDMONDS / FAIRFAX NZ Yash Amin, a chef, has grown his own chillies in his backyard for years.

"There was once when I just touched it and I washed my hands four or five times and I could still feel them tingling."

Also hidden among the herbs and produce in Amin's garden are previous hottest chilli record holders.

There's the Bhut Jolokia, also known as the ghost chilli, which is said to be 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce.

ELESHA EDMONDS / FAIRFAX NZ Amin's homemade “suicide sauce” contains more than three kinds of chillies including the Carolina Reaper.

Alongside it is the exceptionally hot Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper which is the size of golf ball.

Amin, a chef by trade, has grown his own chillies for years having worked in hotels around the world where "everyone likes hot food".

His most notable positions include working as an executive sous chef at the Hilton Dubai and the Hilton Trinidad hotels.

"When I was working there they used to make this very, very hot pepper sauce," Amin says.

"Because I can eat a fair bit of chilli I was still able to handle it but my god it was very, very hot."

The father-of-two began growing different varieties of chillies off his balcony of the hotels he lived at and has continued doing so since he moved to New Zealand.

Amin says he's now managed to adapt a hot sauce with his homegrown chillies.

At first he gave away his homemade "suicide sauce" through the website Neighbourly but soon the sauce gained too much interest for him to handle all the orders.

He also set up a small stand at a farmers market and sold out in an hour.

Amin says he plans to continue to make the sauce in small batches and see if the interest continues.

The Carolina Reaper has held the Guinness World Record as the hottest chili pepper since 2013.

For context, Amin only uses one-and-a-half Carolina Reaper peppers when cooking a very hot chicken curry for 100 wedding guests.

How to handle the spice:

Amin's advice after eating a chilli is not to reach for a glass of water to soothe the burning.

"If you drink water it's probably going to make it worse," he says.

"It somehow transmits all the capsaicin which is the active ingredient in the chilli all over your body."

Ideally you should eat a spoonful of sugar or a dark chocolate, Amin says.

Milk may also work although Amin says sugar soothes the mouth quickly.