Trying to generalize about hot peppers is difficult because the flavor and heat level varies with each type of pepper. Hot pepper plants generally are easier to grow and produce more peppers than sweet pepper plants.

The active ingredient that causes all the fire in hot peppers is called capsaicin (tiny, blisterlike sacs on the fruit’s inner wall). Fewer sacs are located at the tips of hot peppers, so you can bite off the tip of a hot pepper and be fooled into thinking it’s not that hot. If you cut into the pepper or handle it roughly, however, you break the inner-wall lining, releasing capsaicin throughout the fruit — even to the tip. Some varieties, such as habañero, are so hot that you can get serious burns in your mouth, eyes, or skin. Always wear gloves when harvesting peppers. To counteract the hotness of hot peppers, try eating dairy products such as yogurt, ice cream, or milk with your hot dishes.

Here are some different hot pepper varieties that you can grow:

• ‘Cherry Bomb’ hybrid: Mildly hot, 2-inch-round (5 cm), thick-walled fruits mature in 65 days to a bright red.
• ‘Hungarian Hot Wax’: Medium-hot, 7- to 8-inch-long (18- to 20-cm), tapered, peppers mature from yellow to red in 70 days and are great for pickling.
• ‘Serrano’: Candle-flame-shaped, 21/2-inch-long (6 cm), fiery hot peppers mature in 77 days and are born abundantly on 3-foot-tall (1 m) plants.
• ‘Super Chili’ hybrid: Produce an abundance of 2-inch-long (5 cm), cone-shaped, hot fruits in 75 days that you can dry or eat fresh.

Heats Off To Wilbur Scoville

The Scoville Heat Scale rates pepper hotness. The scale ranges from 0 to 350,000 and measures pepper hotness in multiples of 100. The following table shows some of the most popular hot pepper types and their hotness ratings. The chart gives a range for each rating because weather, growing conditions, and pepper variety can all affect how hot a pepper is.