Pepper Substitute Chart for 14 Peppers, by Heat and Flavor

What can you use instead of a pepper?

Find the pepper your recipe calls for, then read across. Each swap sits in the same heat band where one exists, and the gram column tells you how much of it gives your dish about the same heat. The amounts are estimates from range midpoints, by weight.

Same band first, amount second: a swap from the same band needs only a small change in grams, so it barely changes your dish. A swap two bands away can match the heat, but the gram column gets extreme, and the volume of pepper in your pot changes with it.

Laid end to end, most rows form one chain from the sweet bell through the cubanelle to the Thai chile. The habanero pair stands apart, with nothing near it in heat.

How do you work out how much to use?

Take the midpoint of each range, divide the original's by the swap's, and multiply by the grams in your recipe. Keep the form the same: fresh for fresh, dried for dried, and you can size any swap on a scrap of paper.

Say a recipe wants 30 g of serrano and you have jalapeños. The serrano midpoint is (10,000 + 25,000) ÷ 2 = 17,500 SHU and the jalapeño's is (2,000 + 8,000) ÷ 2 = 5,000¹. So 30 × (17,500 ÷ 5,000) = 105 g of jalapeño for about the same heat.

Recipes count pods, not grams, so turn the answer back into pods. USDA weighs one raw jalapeño at 14 g⁷, so 105 g is about seven and a half jalapeños. That much extra green flesh also adds crunch and water to a salsa; if the bowl looks crowded, use five jalapeños and accept a milder batch. The serrano swaps work through the same numbers pod by pod.

Which swaps keep the flavor, and which only match the heat?

A swap keeps the flavor when you use the same pepper in another form, the same pod type, or the same species. Everything else only matches the heat, and you rebuild the rest yourself with color, smoke or a second pepper.

Flavor matters most where the pepper is the dish. In a chile relleno made from a poblano, or in a raw salsa, you taste the pod itself, so stay in the left column. In a long-cooked chili or a stew, you will rarely notice a heat swap from the right column.

Can you use dried chiles or powder instead of fresh?

Yes, if you swap by the part you have left once the water is gone. A fresh red chile is 88 % water⁹, while ground cayenne is 8 %⁸, so 1 g of powder holds the solids of about 7.7 g of fresh pod: (100 − 8.05) ÷ (100 − 88.02) = 7.7.

1Fresh red chile: 88 % water, about 45 g a pod⁹21 tsp cayenne: 1.8 g, the solids of about 14 g fresh⁸⁹

1. Fresh red chile: 88 % water, about 45 g a pod⁹
2. 1 tsp cayenne: 1.8 g, the solids of about 14 g fresh⁸⁹

USDA weighs a teaspoon of cayenne at 1.8 g⁸, so one teaspoon stands in for about 14 g of fresh red chile, roughly a third of a 45 g pod⁹. Do the pepper swap first with the midpoint ratio, then convert the form.

Powder works where the pepper disappears into the dish, like a stew, a rub or a sauce; keep whole pods where you see and bite them, like salsa or rellenos. Either way, add it a pinch at a time and taste.

Swapping one dried chile for another

Dried pods carry their own names, so your recipe may ask for one you have never seen. Most of them are a fresh pepper you already know, dried, and the table tells you which.

Whole dried pods need water before most sauces. NMSU covers washed pods with boiling water for 30 minutes and gets about 1 pint of purée from 12 to 14 large pods¹¹, so a recipe that wants a cup of red chile sauce needs six or seven pods.

Why does the same swap feel hotter one night?

Because each range is wide, and two pods from your one bag can sit at opposite ends. A habanero runs from 100,000 to 350,000 SHU¹, three and a half times from bottom to top.

Cultivars move it too. NMSU's New Mexican chiles average anywhere from 0 to 9,500 SHU depending on the cultivar, and NMSU notes those averages shift by year and growing location⁴. Add three quarters of the worked amount, taste, then add the rest.

What goes wrong with a swap?

Most failed swaps break the heat, the water or the color. You can spot each one before you finish the pot.

• Too hot. You jumped two bands and kept the recipe's grams. A Thai chile for a cayenne needs half the weight².
• Watery salsa. You used fresh pods where the recipe meant dried; a fresh chile is 88 % water⁹. Simmer longer or use powder.
• Wrong color. Aji amarillo turns a sauce yellow and aji panca turns it dark red; add yellow bell or paprika, as the aji amarillo swaps do in grams.

Which swap should you pick?

Work down this list and stop at the first one your shop has. Each step you go down gives up a little more of the original's taste.

1. The same pepper in another form, sized by water: dried for fresh at about 1 g for 7.7 g⁸.
2. The same pod type or species: any New Mexican green for an Anaheim, Scotch bonnet for habanero.
3. A pepper from the same heat band, sized with the midpoint formula.
4. A blend: one hot pepper for the heat plus a mild one for body and color, the way the aji swaps work.

We print a flavor note only where a primary source describes the flavor; where none does, our chart says so rather than guess, and you decide. To see a pepper's full profile before you swap, open its entry in the pepper index, where every heat range carries its source.