What Can You Do With Banana Peppers?

Banana peppers are the one ingredient you've been missing if you love a little tangy heat on, well, pretty much anything. These peppers are commonly sold at most major grocery stores; they can be found whole in the produce department or sliced and sold in airtight jars. They can be consumed fresh or eaten pickled, and the best way to use them — as the focus of the dish or merely a topping — depends on what you're looking for from your meal.

Banana peppers aren't overly spicy. They're piquant, with a slight sweetness to them, and they're nowhere near the spice level of habaneros or even cherry peppers. They fall around 500 Scoville units, whereas a cherry pepper can go up to 5,000, and habanero reaches as high as 350,000. But if you have a low spice tolerance, start by adding them as a sandwich topping to explore their flavor before diving into a full pepper.

If you've decided to purchase them for the first time, there are plenty of ways to use them. Banana peppers pair well with Italian meats, so you can slice them and add them to a sandwich loaded with salami, capicola, and provolone — the peppers add an exciting flavor. In that vein, you can also stuff whole banana peppers with meat and cheese. The latter makes a great appetizer or side dish. 

Keeping with the Italian theme, banana peppers are a delicious pizza topping or can be added to stromboli, calzones, or any other cheesy, saucy dish.

Banana peppers have delicate skin, so they won't work as well as jalapeños if you're planning to bread and fry them. However, you can grill them to add a slightly charred flavor to the pepper. They're commonly pickled, too, by soaking them in a mixture of vinegar and sugar. This adds a sweet heat.

While Italian meats and cheeses are common pairings for these tangy peppers, you aren't limited to those ingredients. In addition to making a great Italian sandwich topping, banana peppers add a nice heat to beef dishes, too. 

Burgers, steak sandwiches, and even roast beef are all enhanced with the addition of these yellow peppers. Even grilled cheese can benefit from the mild spice these peppers produce. They make an excellent salad topping, too.

If you have an abundance of banana peppers, make sure you properly store them so they don't go to waste. Banana peppers should be kept in a bag inside the refrigerator, where they'll keep for about a week. To keep them around for much longer, you should pickle them; any peppers kept in vinegar will last a significant amount of time. The freshness varies based on how you pickle them, but expect them to keep for a minimum of two weeks and up to six months. Mold, murky brine, or a weird smell are the easiest ways to tell when pickled peppers have gone bad.