Everything You Need To Know About Peppers

Let's talk peppers. They come in different shapes, sizes, and flavors, and can be hot, sweet, spicy, and mild. Peppers are the fruit from a flowering plant in the nightshade family. Despite all the varieties out there, every pepper is in the biological classification Capsicum. Peppers are used in just about every cuisine in the world, from green chile in Indian curry to red chile in Korean kimchi to the spicy salsas of Mexico.

A pepper's heat is measured using the Scoville scale. Peppers with no heat, like bell peppers, are zero Scoville heat units, while some of the world's spiciest peppers are three million units.

Zero to 4,000 units is considered mild; 4,000 to 15,000 is medium; 15,000 to 50,000 is hot; and 50,000 plus is absolutely on fire. A pepper's heat is mostly held in the seeds and ribs, so if you cut those out, the pepper will add less spice to the dish.

To give us the scoop on peppers, we chatted with Robert Schueller of produce distributor Melissa's. He wrote a book for the brand called The Great Pepper Cookbook. After all, there are thousands of types of peppers out there—plenty to write an entire cookbook about.

Below, we list all the common types of peppers by their Scoville heat unit and recommend some recipes you can use them in.