The Scoville heat unit scale rates how spicy peppers and pepper-based products (like hot sauce and chili powders) are. It starts at zero units with the bell pepper and goes up to 16 million units, which is pure capsaicin. Most commercially available peppers don’t crack the 300,000 to 500,000 range, but a few of them are in the millions.
Bell Pepper
Bell peppers are sweet and they can be eaten raw with hummus (or other dips) or cooked into stir-fries. They’re available in red, green, orange, and yellow.
Jalapeno
Just a bump up from Anaheim and poblano peppers, jalapenos start to bring the heat. As one of the more common peppers to cook with, they go great in everything from chilis and soups to salads. A chipotle pepper is simply a smoked jalapeno pepper.
Habanero
Habaneros smoke jalapenos on the heat scale. Under the ghost pepper, they’re one of the hottest widely available peppers. Underneath all that heat, they have hints of sweetness.