Just like grapes grown for wine, hot peppers are incredibly complex.
There are multiple varieties that come in unique shapes, flavors, and, of course, heat.
It’s our goal to help you traverse this wide world of spiciness, and it all starts with the Scoville scale through which the heat is measured. Our hot pepper list brings that famous pepper scale to life. It allows you to see the heat from mild to hot, as well as get an idea of what that heat is like via our jalapeño reference point. We show you hot much hotter (or milder) a hot pepper could be from the jalapeño – a hot pepper most everyone has tried. We find it to be a great way to bring the big numbers on the Scoville scale into perspective.
To read more about a chili pepper, click on its name to view PepperScale’s full article.
Scroll to the bottom to view our glossary of key terms.
| Chili Pepper | Profile | Min SHU | Max SHU | Heat | JalRP | Species | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chili Pepper | Profile | Min SHU | Max SHU | Heat | JalRP | Species | Origin |
Glossary:
SHU: Scoville heat units. The units by which the Scoville scale is measured (read more about them here).
Min/Max SHU: Even individual hot peppers have a range of heat, depending on where they are grown, how long they’ve matured, and even the amount of sun they’ve received. The minimum SHU is the mildest a pepper could be, the maximum SHU is the hottest possible for the variety.
Heat: Mild, Medium, Hot, or Scorching-Hot. You get the picture.
JalRP: Jalapeño reference point. Built to give you perspective of how hot these peppers really are by comparing them against a reference point most everyone has tried. A negative number (like -50) means the amount of times the pepper is milder. A zero (0) means equal heat. Any positive numbers show the amount of times that the pepper is hotter than a jalapeño.
Species: All hot peppers belong to the Capsicum genus (part of the nightshade family), but there are multiple species within it.
Origin: Where the chili pepper has its roots.
