While cucumber pickles are a great way to give your sandwich some tang, there's nothing like adding a small, sweet, sour, spicy pepper to the mix. Two common pickled peppers for burgers, sandwiches, and hot dogs are pepperoncini and banana peppers, and while they look similar, there are a few key differences between them.

Banana peppers (also called banana chilis and yellow wax peppers) are long, yellow or yellow-green, smooth, and slightly curved, just like a banana. Originally from Hungary, they range from 0 to 500 on the Scoville heat scale and taste sour and hot when pickled, though more ripe peppers are sweeter and milder.

Unlike banana peppers, pepperoncini are wrinkly and about an inch smaller than most banana peppers on average. Hailing from Italy and Greece, pepperoncini are sweet, crunchy, tangy, and a bit sour, usually ranging from 100 to 500 on the Scoville heat scale, which makes them a little spicier than banana peppers.

It’s completely fine to swap banana peppers and pepperoncini for each other, since they both generally showcase the same flavors. However, it’s important to keep their slight textural difference in mind: banana peppers are smoother, sturdier, and better for stuffing, and pepperoncini are more juicy and limp.