The diversity in paprika types, from sweet to hot and smoked, offers a range of flavors - sweet, earthy, bold, and smoky. This spice enhances the taste and adds a vibrant red color to dishes like goulash, chicken paprikash, and various rice dishes.


Sweet paprika measures 500 to 1,500 Scoville heat units, making it a very mild pepper indeed. Hotter varieties of paprika can approach 30,000 to 50,000 heat units, which is basically equivalent to pure cayenne pepper. So if your recipe explicitly calls for hot paprika, you could substitute cayenne pepper.

Chili sauce is really a generic term for any sauce that utilizes chilies, tomato sauce, vinegar (sometimes), sugar, and other spices. The key differentiator from the traditional hot sauce is its thickness. Chili sauce isn’t something you’d sprinkle from a hot sauce dasher bottle. It’s thicker, often more akin to ketchup in flow.
Additionally, capsaicin oleoresin is used in the production of pepper spray, a non-lethal self-defense tool that can temporarily incapacitate an attacker by causing intense irritation to the eyes, skin, and respiratory system.
The differences, if any, are typically minor and often come down to regional preferences in terminology or slight variations in the type of chili pepper used, the coarseness of the grind or the inclusion of other spices in the mix. For most culinary purposes, these terms can be used interchangeably without significantly affecting the flavor or outcome of the dish.