The Spicy In-N-Out Topping To Amplify Your Burger

West Coast cult-favorite burger chain In-N-Out is known for the many different ways you can customize a burger order, from a double-double and triple-triple to animal style and protein style. What it does not offer customers is any hot sauce. You can order a mustard burger, where your patty has mustard added to one side before being grilled to give it an extra tang. However, to really amplify the heat level on your burger, there is one spicy topping— which is not on their "not so secret" secret menu that's actually listed on their website — that you can order: chili peppers, either chopped or whole.

When you order your burger with chopped chilis, they are added directly to your burger patty. You can also order a side of whole peppers if you really want to spice things up. These little yellow chili peppers are cascabella peppers. Although they look like banana peppers or pepperoncinis, cascabella peppers are quite a bit spicier, to the order of 1,500 to 5,000 heat units on the Scoville scale, compared to barely 500 heat units for the former two. J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, who's certainly "no amateur when it comes to heat" told Serious Eats that biting into one of the whole cascabella peppers "nearly brought [him] to tears."

Unfortunately, due to a shortage of cascabella peppers in recent months (something that also occurred back in 2016), customers have been getting sliced banana peppers when requesting a side of chili peppers, which is not to everyone's taste. 

And although the shortage of cascabella peppers is being resolved, not all In-N-Outs are back to business as usual when it comes to their sole spicy offering. At the In-N-Out in Carson City, Nevada, they don't expect to receive cascabella peppers until August, noting that In-N-Out seems to be focused on making sure their largest markets receive them first. If you live near a smaller market that is still offering banana peppers and can't live without the extra heat and flavor from the cascabella peppers, do what some die-hard fans have resorted to during the shortage, and bring your own when dining out at In-N-Out.