herbsandspices.food The reference guide to herbs and spices

Solanaceae

The nightshade family

Tomatoes, potatoes, aubergines and every chilli and sweet pepper.

Order Solanales · nightshades and morning glories Asterids 50 pages

⚠️ Worth knowing

Chilli heat is an irritant, not an allergy; see Capsaicin. People avoiding nightshades also avoid paprika, cayenne and most chilli blends.

🌶️ Chillies (50)

7 Pot chillies
Trinidad's superhots, said to be enough to season seven pots of stew
🌶️ Heat 1,000,000–1,800,000 SHU
Ají amarillo
Peru's golden chilli, the foundation of Peruvian cooking
🌶️ Heat 30,000–50,000 SHU
Ají dulce
The Caribbean seasoning pepper with habanero perfume and almost no heat
🌶️ Heat 0–1,000 SHU
Ají panca
Peru's dark, mild, berry-sweet dried chilli
🌶️ Heat 500–1,500 SHU
Aleppo pepper
Oily, fruity, moderately hot flakes from Syria and southern Turkey
🌶️ Heat 10,000 SHU
Banana pepper and Hungarian wax
Two look-alike yellow peppers: one sweet, one with a real kick
🌶️ Heat 0–15,000 SHU
Bell pepper
The sweet, heatless Capsicum: green when unripe, red, yellow or orange when ripe
Bird's eye chilli
The small, fierce chilli of Southeast Asian cooking
🌶️ Heat 50,000–100,000 SHU
Byadgi chilli
Karnataka's wrinkled, deep-red chilli, prized for colour rather than heat
🌶️ Heat 1,500–15,000 SHU
Carolina Reaper
The American superhot that held the world record for a decade
🌶️ Heat 1,400,000–2,200,000 SHU
Cascabel
The round, rattling dried chilli of Mexico, nutty and mild
🌶️ Heat 1,000–3,000 SHU
Cayenne pepper
The slim red chilli behind the world's standard hot powder
🌶️ Heat 30,000–50,000 SHU
Chile de árbol
A slim, bright-red Mexican chilli that stays red when dried
🌶️ Heat 15,000–30,000 SHU
Chilli flakes
Crushed dried chillies, the world's most familiar way to add heat
🌶️ Heat 15,000–50,000 SHU
Chilli pepper
The fruit of the genus Capsicum, from sweet bell pepper to Carolina Reaper
🌶️ Heat 0–2,690,000 SHU
Chiltepín and pequín
The tiny wild bird peppers of Mexico and the American Southwest
🌶️ Heat 30,000–100,000 SHU
Chipotle
Smoke-dried jalapeño, Mexico's smoky chilli
🌶️ Heat 2,500–8,000 SHU
Datil pepper
The fruity, fiery chilli of St Augustine, Florida
🌶️ Heat 100,000–300,000 SHU
Dorset naga
A superhot selected in an English county from a Bangladeshi chilli
🌶️ Heat 900,000–1,000,000 SHU
Espelette pepper
Piment d'Espelette, the protected chilli of the French Basque Country
🌶️ Heat 4,000 SHU
Facing heaven chilli
Chao tian jiao, the upward-pointing dried chilli of Sichuan cooking
🌶️ Heat 30,000–50,000 SHU
Fatalii
The lemon-yellow African cousin of the habanero
🌶️ Heat 125,000–400,000 SHU
Fresno chilli
The Californian red chilli that looks like a jalapeño and is sold ripe
🌶️ Heat 2,500–10,000 SHU
Ghost pepper
Bhut jolokia, the northeast Indian chilli that started the superhot era
🌶️ Heat 800,000–1,041,000 SHU
Gochugaru
Korean red chilli powder, the colour and warmth of kimchi
🌶️ Heat 4,000–8,000 SHU
Guajillo
The bright, tangy red workhorse of Mexican dried chillies
🌶️ Heat 2,500–5,000 SHU
Guindilla
The pickled green pepper of the Basque Country, and Spain's word for a small hot chilli
🌶️ Heat 1,000–2,000 SHU
Guntur chilli
The hot red chilli of Andhra Pradesh, and the market that trades it by the mountain
🌶️ Heat 35,000–40,000 SHU
Habanero
The lantern-shaped chilli with tropical fruit and serious heat
🌶️ Heat 100,000–350,000 SHU
Jalapeño
Mexico's most familiar green chilli, and the parent of chipotle
🌶️ Heat 2,500–8,000 SHU
Kashmiri chilli
The deep-red, mild chilli that colours Indian curries
🌶️ Heat 1,000–2,000 SHU
Madame Jeanette
Suriname's crumpled yellow chilli, a staple of Surinamese and Dutch kitchens
🌶️ Heat 125,000–325,000 SHU
Maraş biber
The deep-red, oily pepper flakes of Kahramanmaraş
🌶️ Heat 10,000 SHU
Mulato
The darkest of the dried poblanos, sweet with chocolate and liquorice
🌶️ Heat 1,000–3,000 SHU
New Mexico chile
The long green and red chile of the American Southwest, roasted every autumn
🌶️ Heat 500–10,000 SHU
Padrón and shishito peppers
Small green frying peppers, mostly mild, occasionally not
🌶️ Heat 50–2,500 SHU
Paprika
Ground dried peppers, from Hungary's national spice to the Spanish kitchen
🌶️ Heat 0–3,000 SHU
Pasilla
The dark, raisin-wrinkled 'little raisin' of Mexican cooking
🌶️ Heat 1,000–2,500 SHU
Pepperoncini
The mild, wrinkled, pickled pepper of Greek and Italian-American tables
🌶️ Heat 100–500 SHU
Piquillo pepper
The little red beak of Navarre, roasted over fire and sold in jars
🌶️ Heat 500–1,000 SHU
Piri piri
The African bird's eye chilli, and the Portuguese-African sauce named after it
🌶️ Heat 50,000–175,000 SHU
Poblano and ancho
Mexico's great mild chilli, fresh and dried
🌶️ Heat 1,000–2,000 SHU
Rocoto
The hairy-leaved, black-seeded Andean chilli that likes the cold
🌶️ Heat 30,000–100,000 SHU
Scotch bonnet
The Caribbean's fragrant, fiery chilli, essential to jerk
🌶️ Heat 100,000–350,000 SHU
Serrano pepper
The slender, sharper cousin of the jalapeño
🌶️ Heat 10,000–25,000 SHU
Smoked paprika (pimentón)
Spain's oak-smoked red pepper powder, the flavour of chorizo
🌶️ Heat 0–3,000 SHU
Tabasco pepper
The juicy Capsicum frutescens behind the famous Louisiana sauce
🌶️ Heat 30,000–50,000 SHU
Trinidad Moruga Scorpion
The Trinidadian superhot named the world's hottest by the Chile Pepper Institute in 2012
🌶️ Heat 1,200,000–2,000,000 SHU
Urfa biber
The dark, smoky-sweet 'sweated' chilli of southeastern Turkey
🌶️ Heat 7,500 SHU
Ñora
The small round dried pepper of Murcia, heart of romesco and Murcian pimentón
🌶️ Heat 0–1,000 SHU

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