When you think about it, the term hot sauce is actually very vague. Literally, it means a sauce that is hot. What makes the sauce hot? What kind of chilis are put in the sauce to make it hot? At what concentration of a particular chili does the sauce become hot, hotter, and the hottest?

The jalapeno is one pepper that is used to make hot sauce. It is a fruit that grows to roughly three inches long when fully matured, and is called in its native Mexico a huachinago or chile gordo. The heat of a jalapeno is considered to be mild to medium based on the Scoville heat unit scale, a system of measurement that ranks the spiciness of a particular chili pepper. A jalapeno can have anywhere between 2,000 and 8,000 Scoville heat units.

The cayenne pepper is named after a city in French Guiana. Also called the Guinea spice or bird pepper, it has a Scoville rating of 30,000 to 50,000. Cayenne peppers are used fresh, but dried and powdered cayenne can be found in almost every spice cabinet in the U.S. The traditional Buffalo chicken sauce uses cayenne pepper as one of its main ingredients.

The tabasco pepper is a well known pepper because of its use in Tabasco sauce. Tabasco peppers have a similar Scoville rating to cayenne peppers, and are the only chili pepper that is not dry on the inside. The tabasco pepper produces a juice. These tiny peppers have had a rough history. Many crops were destroyed in the tobacco mosaic virus crop epidemic of the 1960’s, and it took nearly a decade for growers to produce a resistant variety. The tabasco pepper rates between 30,000 to 50,000 on the Scoville scale.

Out of Brazil, Mozambique, and Portugal, the malagueta pepper (named after the West African melegueta pepper) is a 2 inch pepper with a 60,000 to 100,000 Scoville rating. Used in all types of dishes in Brazil and Mozambique, the malagueta is used in Portugal primarily for poultry. It is easy to get the West African pepper confused with the malagueta chili while writing about them, but they are very different. The West African spice comes from the ginger family.

The piri piri chili is also known as the African red devil. It is also grown in Portugal and Mozambique, and has a Scoville rating of 175,000 heat units or so.

The scotch bonnet pepper is grown in the Maldives Islands, West Africa, and the Caribbean, and is one of the hottest peppers known. Cousin to the habanero, the scotch bonnet has a heat rating of 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville units, and is used all around the world to flavor spicy dishes. This pepper, also known as a Bonney pepper, is the culprit behind the delicious jerk dishes found in Caribbean food, and is also used in recipes from many other island countries.

Finally, the habanero chili is one of the most intense peppers we know of. While nearly everyone has heard of the habanero, its origins are fuzzy. It might be from South America, though 18th century researchers placed the birth of the habanero in China. Today, we know for sure these hot peppers are grown in Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, and even in Texas and Idaho. These spicy perennials have a Scoville rating of 100,000 to 350,000 and have increased in popularity as spicy foods and hot sauces have become more prominent in new recipes.

Author Bio: Lawrence Reaves loves good hot sauce and is a fan of panolapepper.com

Category: Cooking
Keywords: hot sauce, hot peppers, hot chilis, chili peppers, tabasco, habanero, jalapeno, scoville rating