As a kid, I couldn’t handle a drop of heat. Chicken wings, hot pickles, tomato sauce with even a pinch of red pepper flakes—I wouldn’t touch any spicy recipe with a 10-foot pole. Then I learned that spice tolerance isn’t inflexible. Quite the opposite, it’s more like a muscle that wants to be exercised in order to grow strong. (Parents have known this all along.)
I started slow, then worked my way up to actually hot hot sauce. Now I’m emptying a jar of chili crisp on my eggs in the morning and adding mashed-up chiles to my fruit salad. So, if spice isn’t your thing yet, be patient. Start with these cozy sweet potatoes with hot honey. Move onto pico de gallo, with fresh jalapeños (relatively mild as far as hot peppers go). From there, you’ll be ready to make your own pickled chiles and harissa, to top all sorts of dishes.
And if you came here because you already have hot sauce in your bag (actually, three types)—well, you came to the right place. Here are our 29 favorite tongue-tingling, capsaicin-laden recipes.
