47 Spicy Recipes to Make You Sweat

Were you one of those kids who wouldn’t touch spicy recipes with a ten-foot pole? Buffalo wings, hot pickles, tomato sauce with even a pinch of red pepper flakes—you didn’t want a drop of heat. Well, did you know spice tolerance isn’t inflexible? Quite the opposite, it’s more like a muscle that wants to be exercised in order to grow strong. (Some parents have known this all along.) Start slow, work your way up to actually hot hot sauce, and pretty soon, you’ll be emptying a jar of homemade chili crisp on your eggs in the morning and adding mashed-up chiles to your fruit salad. From there, you’ll be ready to make your own pickled chiles and harissa for topping all sorts of dishes.

And if you’re here because you already carry hot sauce in your bag (three types, each made from a different variety of chile)—well, you came to the right place. Here are our favorite tongue-tingling spicy recipes.