How to Use PepperScale

Welcome to PepperScale! Whether you’re new to chili peppers or an old pro, you’ll find something here to enjoy. PepperScale was founded in 2013 as a resource to explore the nuances of hot peppers, both their heat and their flavors. Like grapes grown for wine, chili peppers have surprising flavor depth and each can bring something new to your cooking.

There’s a lot to take in here. We have over 1,500 articles and 300+ videos: pepper profiles, recipes, hot sauce reviews, gardening guides, cooking tips, and more. Below you’ll find our recommended places to start based on your comfort level with our site and your potential interests.

For everyone new to PepperScale: Our master lists

We have two master lists that are the pillars of the site. We recommend to everyone to jump right into these lists as they are incredible resources for your chili pepper journey. Save them, come back to them often, and share them with your friends.

  • Our hot pepper list. We’ve profiled over 120 chilies to date, giving detail on heat, flavor, appearance, uses, and more. Whether you’re new or old to hot peppers, you’ll likely find something new to explore here!
  • Our hot sauce rankings list. We’ve reviewed 75+ different hot sauces (and more each month), from popular brands to craft blends. We cover overall flavor, heat balance, usability, and collectibility in our hot sauce rankings. You can filter them, too, based on general heat.

For cooks: Our spicy recipes and ebooks

You can find our spicy recipes in three ways.

  • By our top navigation. The spicy recipes category shows you our recipes in published order. So if you want to see what’s been most recently added, go here to see what you’ve missed.
  • By our advanced search (magnifying glass on the site). Our search does some amazing things. You can search by a chili pepper or any ingredient and find recipes that use them. You’ll see categories for popular search results, results by that specific ingredient, recipe videos, and other related resources. It’s an amazing resource for discovery.
  • In ebook format. We package many of our recipes into purchasable thematic ebooks for those who prefer to use their e-reader/tablet while cooking in the kitchen. Each ebook comes zipped with a PDF and an EPUB version (sized to be Send to Kindle friendly.)
Our search gives you great ways to discover recipes with the ingredients at hand

For hot sauce fans: Our reviews, videos, and giveaways

You can discover our hot sauce reviews in two ways.

  • By our top navigation. Simply click on Reviews and you’ll see our most recent hot sauce reviews, listed in order of publishing. If you’re looking to see what you’ve missed recently, this is the place to go.
  • By our advanced search (magnifying glass on the site). You can search for hot sauces right in our search and see, broken out, both our written reviews and any of our Sizzle Reel hot sauce review videos. Try search for the hot sauce name plus the word review. For instance, “Sriracha review” in the image below showcases three different sriracha brands, along with any video reviews we have on them.
  • Our hot sauce rankings list. Of course, if you’re looking for a new hot sauce to try, our rankings provide a terrific place to start.
  • Giveaways. From time to time we raffle off hot sauces (or sometimes other fiery products.) The best way to be alerted is to subscribe to PepperScale. We alert our newsletter readers about when these giveaways start and end. Or monitor our home page to see if there’s a recent contest published and live.
Search for the term “Sriracha review” brings up both our written reviews and any videos

For chili pepper learning

You’ll find so many ways to learn through the links above, as we link internally to terrific resources throughout, but below are a few more tips to take your chili pepper learning to another level.

  • Our hottest pepper in the world list. You can see the top 15 chilies by heat right here. It’s a good quick guide to the upper echelon of the pepper scale.
  • Our free ebook (as a subscriber). This is provided as a freebie to our subscribers (along with discounts on our spices at our Etsy shop and our weekly newsletter.) It covers 20 top chilies, and it’s an excellent place for those new to the Scoville scale to start.
  • Our PepperScale comparisons. We pair two different chilies, spices, or hot sauces in one post to really compare and contrast their similarities and differences. Simply search for a chili pepper with “vs.” in our search (click any magnifying glass on the site).
  • Our substitute recommendations. Don’t have a specific pepper or fiery spice at hand, our substitute recommendations give you options. Use our search (click any magnifying glass): Type in the pepper or spice plus the word “substitute” and see what’s available.
  • Simply type a chili pepper name into our search. We have so many resources available. Searching by a pepper will show you our profiles, showdowns, substitutes, recipes (and where it’s used as an ingredient), and other article types.

For gardeners (beginners or vets)

We’re growing our gardening section quickly (pun intended!) Here’s how you can best find content.

  • Our gardening section. Here you can see our gardening articles in order of publishing. Want to see what you may have recently missed or simply scan through our gardening posts, this is the best place to start.
  • Planting guides. We do have planting guides on many popular chilies. You can find them via our search. Simply type in “planting guide” in our search to see what’s available.
  • Our search functionality (magnifying glass on the site). For more advanced gardening topics, use our search to discover themes you are interested in.

Shopping PepperScale fiery spices

We do offer quite a few fiery spices and spice sets via our Etsy store. And subscribers receive 15% off always (as long as you’re still subscribed.)