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Best is always a subjective term. It depends completely on what your goals are. Do you want the hottest pepper sauce, nicest color, flavor or texture? Hot pepper sauce can be made with one type of pepper, mixtures of peppers and a variety of other ingredients which add interest or simply cool the sauce down.
The best peppers for hot sauce are fresh, locally grown and organic. Any type of pepper can be used that is fresh and chemical free. Peppers which have been sprayed, shipped and stored produce lower quality sauce as chemicals linger on peppers and long shipping and storage time allows mold growth.
From a taste perspective there is no best, just preferred. There are several perspectives which to look at to determine which pepper to use for which type of hot sauce including, heat level, flavor, color, availability and ethnicity.
Best Peppers to Use for Spicy Fermented Hot Sauce
The spice level of your hot sauce may be a source of pride for you. Being able to handle a hot sauce your friends or relatives deem insane may be your motivation. If so, here is a list of hot peppers which have increasingly more capsaicin. The higher the capsaicin the spicier the food is so to ramp up your spice level use the next hotter pepper in the list until you get one which is to your liking.
The heat scale of peppers is called the scoville scale. A pepper is placed on the scale depending on how many times an extract of the pepper needs to be diluted so the capsaicin cannot be detected. Although this is more subjective than pure chemical analysis it does give a good understanding of the heat a pepper has.
The Scoville Scale
| Pepper Type | Spice Level |
| Bell, any color | 0 |
| Jalapeno | 2500 – 5000 |
| Serrano | 6000 – 23000 |
| Cayenne | 30000 – 50000 |
| Habanero | 100000 – 350000 |
| Red Savina | 500000 |
| Ghost | 1000000 |
| Carolina Reaper | 2200000 |
As you can see there are many different choices when it comes to the spice level of your fermented hot sauce. Choosing the pepper depends on what you are after.
Best Flavored Hot Pepper for Hot Sauce
This is a subjective measurement which cannot be given a direct answer. Everyone has a different opinion of what tastes good so it is impossible to say this is the best flavored pepper for hot sauce. Again it depends on the purpose of the sauce, who is eating it and how it is being used.
Tabasco, the most popular hot sauce, is made from tabasco peppers, fermented and aged for a minimum of 3 years in wooden barrels, blended with white vinegar and filtered to remove any fibrous bits. Although Tobasco is the most popular there are many recipes which provide different flavor profiles.
Hot sauce can be flavored using a wide variety of flavoring agents outside of the peppers used in the hot sauce which gives the options to refine the flavor of a hot sauce to specific needs and flavor profiles.
Peppers are a fruit and therefore contain a fair amount of sugar making them sweet when eaten plain but when the capsaicin content of the peppers is high the sweetness is overwhelmed by the spicy nature of the peppers.
How to reduce the heat of hot pepper sauce
Capsaicin is mostly found in the white pith of a pepper, the part which holds the seeds to the pepper. This pith is what is removed when the seeds are discarded from the pepper. This leads to a myth which many cooks have about where the heat of a pepper is. The heat of a pepper is not in the seeds, in fact there is little capsaicin found in the seeds of a pepper so saving the seeds and using them to spice a dish is not as effective as using the pith itself.
To control the heat of a sauce choose your peppers carefully as the amount of capsaicin varies dramatically with the type of pepper, whether the pith from the pepper is included or removed and the use of other ingredients in the sauce.
As you can see from the above scale the most important consideration of the heat of a sauce is the base ingredient (the pepper) and how spicy it starts out at in the first place. If you want a highly spicy sauce use peppers which have a high scoville value.
Once you have decided on the type of pepper the next thing to decide is how much of the pith to include in the sauce. The heat of a pepper is mostly found in the pith so by altering the amount of pith you include you can adjust the heat of the sauce to some degree.
The heat of a sauce is dependent on the concentration of the capsaicin in the sauce. The heat of the sauce can be further adjusted by adding additional ingredients like garlic and onions which are common in hot sauce recipes. Their presence adds flavor complexity while diluting the capsaicin a little while lowering the heat a bit.
Finally, by adding some sugar to the fermenting peppers the heat of the sauce can be further lowered. During the fermentation process some of the capsaicin is broken down and used by the microorganisms. By adding some sugar to the fermentation the active phase of the fermentation will be prolonged and as a result the heat will be lowered a bit.
Beware with the addition of sugar the sauce will become more acidic as the amount of available energy to the lactic acid bacteria will be higher allowing them to maintain growth for a longer period of time.
Traditional pepper choices for ethnic foods
Every culture has their own taste profile, some of which are known for being especially spicy. The famous Jamaican barbecue, Indian curry and Mexican tacos are just a few of the typical traditional dishes which come to mind when spicy food is brought up. Each of these traditional foods use a different type of pepper with a unique flavor and heat profile.
Mexican
The typical Mexican spicy recipe centers around the Jalapeno pepper. With a scoville level of 2500-4000 it is hot but not exceedingly so. Jalapeno peppers are used fresh, dried or pickled and either green or ripe.
When they are ripe they turn red and are usually smoked when they become known as chipotle peppers. The spice level stays fairly even as they ripen although they can increase a bit depending on the weather conditions and as they are smoked they become dehydrated a bit which concentrates the capsaicin in the pepper raising the heat another notch or two.
Indian
Indian cuisine uses many different types of peppers in their traditional recipes but the most common ones are red chili peppers and kashmiri chili peppers.
Kashmiri peppers are used for color and flavor adjustment of a dish. They are low in capsaicin content so their spice level is much lower with a value of only 1000-2000 scoville units. This pepper is used much like paprika is used in North American foods.
Red Chili peppers are used to add the heat to a spicy dish. Their scoville units are between 300,000 and 450,000 units making them one of the hottest chilies used regularly in traditional recipes. The heat level is slightly higher than cayenne pepper which is used regularly in American chili recipes.
American
American recipes are influenced by the many cultures which have become part of the American population. This has led to a wide variety of hot peppers making an appearance in recipes throughout America. These include cayenne, jalapeno, tabasco, habanero and red chili peppers are all used to make a variety of hot sauces. The most popular being tabasco sauce which has been around for over 150 years.
Filipino
The red chili pepper is the predominant pepper of choice in traditional hot filipino recipes such as: pinangat, laing and kinunot. They all use hot chilies either ripe or green with a scoville unit count between 300,000 – 450,000. In most recipes the heat is lowered or masked through the use of coconut milk which has a high fat content. The fat acts as a barrier between the pain sensors in the mouth and the capsaicin in the peppers.
African
Peri-peri sauce is a popular sauce used in various locations in Africa. It is made with several types of hot peppers including hot chilies, cayenne and habanero peppers. Habanero peppers are also used in several meat and rice dishes.
Italian
Most people associate pizza and spaghetti with italian food, which are not traditionally spicy, but Italian food does have many recipes which include spicy peppers. Most famous is the spicy italian sausage which includes two types of heat ingredients:
- Black pepper
Black pepper contains piperine, a compound which activates the pain sensors in the mouth much like capsaicin.
- Hot pepper flakes
Made from dehydrated hot peppers they have a scoville rating between 300,000 – 450,000.
Other hot peppers used in italian cooking include cayenne peppers and anaheim peppers.
Jamaican
It is no joke when people say Jamaican food is spicy. Peppers used in Jamaican food includes; scotch bonnet with a scoville rating of 100,000 – 350,000 and habanero pepper with a similar rating of 150,000 – 350,000. These peppers are used in recipes like hot jerk chicken and barbecued shrimp.