How to Tell Hotness of a Pepper
- 1). Look for a description or heat gauge at the grocery store when selecting your peppers. They are often located next to pricing information.
- 2). Reference the Scoville chart. The Scoville scale is a measured index for how hot or mild a pepper is. A sweet bell pepper clocks in at a zero on the Scoville scale, since it has no lingering heat. A jalapeno is between 2,000 and 3,000 Scoville units and scotch bonnet pepper rates a 100,000 to 325,000.
- 3). Give the pepper a visual inspection. The smaller a pepper is, the hotter it will generally taste. Both red and green peppers can both be very hot, so color is not a reliable indication of how hot a pepper is.
- 4). Determine if the pepper is fresh or smoked. If the pepper has a darkened, crinkly appearance, then it has been smoked. For example, fresh jalapeno peppers are smoked to create chipotle peppers. Smoked peppers are generally hotter than fresh peppers, so if you are trying to avoid peppers that are too hot, select fresh over smoked.
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