Pepper Profiles

Cherry Bomb Pepper

Cherry Bomb Pepper Guide: Heat, Flavor, Uses

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What are Cherry Bomb peppers? Boy, the Cherry Bomb pepper comes loaded with a lot of expectations due to its moniker. You may be thinking here comes a mouth explosion! But, really, this hybrid chili carries more of a modest boom, about the heat of …

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Chilaca Pepper

Chilaca Pepper: A Rare Delight

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The pasilla in fresh form…

Scoville heat units (SHU): 1,000 to 2,500
Jalapeño reference point: Equal heat to 8 times milder
Origin: Mexico
Products and seeds: Chilaca pepper on Amazon

While the long and curvy chilaca pepper may not be the most recognizable (or findable) chili outside of Mexico, its dried form certainly has a fast growing following. When dried, the fresh chilaca chili becomes the popular pasilla pepper, part of the Holy Trinity of chilies used in traditional Mexican mole sauces. Yet there’s more to the chilaca pepper than being behind the scenes of a pepper scale star. There’s a family-friendly heat and a robust meaty flavor here – rich and slightly floral – that’s delicious in salsas. 

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Wiri Wiri Pepper

Wiri Wiri Pepper Guide: Heat, Flavor, Uses

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What are wiri wiri peppers? Sometimes it’s the littlest things that hold the biggest surprises. For instance, the Guyanese wiri wiri pepper may look little – like colorful cherries – but inside it contains sun-like heat rivaling habanero peppers and scotch bonnets (100,000 to 350,000 …

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Medusa Pepper

Medusa Pepper: Monstrously Good Looks

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Perfect for containers, mild and sweet

Scoville heat units (SHU): 1 to 1,000
Jalapeño reference point: 3 to 8,000 times milder
Origin: South America
Seeds: Medusa pepper on Amazon

Looking for a colorful ornamental pepper for container gardening or small garden spaces? The Medusa pepper, with its compact profile and dozens of multi-hued upright chilies per plant, is neat perfect. Its stunning Medusa-like looks belie what’s truly a surprisingly mild and sweet pepper, perfect eating for those with little spice tolerance.

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Italian Long Hot Peppers

Italian Long Hot Peppers: Fryer’s Delight

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Mild and sweet…

Scoville heat units (SHU): 100 – 1,000
Jalapeño reference point: 3 to 80 times milder
Origin: Italy
Products: Italian long hot pepper on Amazon

When you travel in the Northeast of the United States, it’s hard not to stumble upon this long, gangly chili. Italian long hot peppers (a.k.a. long hot peppers, or simply Italian long hots) are now growing in popularity in many regions, but cities like Philadelphia and New York have a special bond. And there’s a lot to love. Italian long hots have only the slightest of sizzles to go along with a delicious sweet pepper flavor profile. They are a favorite fried or roasted as a side, and often placed on hoagies and other sandwiches to add zest to the meal.

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Espelette Pepper

Espelette Pepper: Firing Up French Cuisine

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Rich, subtle, rustic…spicy?

Scoville heat units (SHU): 500 – 4,000 SHU
Jalapeño reference point: Equal heat to 20 times milder
Origin: Basque region, France
Products and seeds: Espelette pepper on Amazon

French cuisine is a lot of things – rich, subtle, and rustic come fast to mind – but meals with any sort of heat is not high on the list. That is except for dishes starring the French native Espelette pepper. Also known as piment d’Espelette, this chili is a common spice of the Basque region of France, and while not a scorcher, it has a delicious subtle heat, slightly smoky and slightly citrusy. It’s so essential to the Basque region and its cuisine that it’s been given – like some wines and cheeses – protective AOC certification.

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melrose pepper

Melrose Pepper Guide: Heat, Flavor, Uses

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What are Melrose peppers? The Windy City may be the last place you think of when you think about spicy peppers. And even with the Melrose pepper, you’d still be right. Melrose peppers, with their curved, tapered bodies, may look like hotter chilies, but really they are zero-heat …

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Beaver Dam Pepper

Beaver Dam Pepper Guide: Heat, Flavor, Uses

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What are Beaver Dam peppers? When you think chili peppers, Wisconsin may not be the first place that pops into your mind. But there’s a hidden treasure up near the Canadian border with a very fitting name. The Beaver Dam pepper – brought to the …

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numex twilight

NuMex Twilight Guide: Heat, Flavor, Uses

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What are NuMex Twilight peppers? The Numex Twilight may be tiny in size, but it packs a surprising amount of heat (30,000 to 50,000 Scoville heat units.) But that’s not what makes these chilies so very special. It’s how they mature – like a rainbow of …

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