Eliza, this should get you started: Poblano peppers. The peppers in this photo are like what I see in the grocery store (and they can get a bit larger). When you use these peppers often times people will roast them to remove the outer skin, but I found with the poblanos in my garden, a variety that never got larger than 4 inches long, that I didn't need to remove the skin. I took out the seeds and then for one dish (a casserole that ends up tasting like the chile relleno described on the page) I blanched them for 3 or 4 minutes, then dried them and put them in my baking dish. You could simply slice or chop them for fried dishes, no need to blanch or peel.

If I could only grow one pepper variety, I'd probably choose these. I use bell peppers a lot, they're easy to grow (they can grow in partial shade and they don't like the super hot weather of summer as much as the mild temperature of fall) but where the bell peppers have good flavor, the poblano have great flavor. (My preference, anyway.)

If you want to add bulk to a dish and want a mild pepper flavor, a good one is the sweet banana pepper. It's smaller and slim, and is like a sweeter bell pepper. I see other places refer to this as the Tuscan pepper and the wax pepper. "Banana" describes only the shape and color, no flavor cognate. Sometimes when I make a dish like chicken fajitas, I slice a lot of onions and banana peppers and will have at least half of the bulk of the dish as the vegetables, the rest chicken.

Hatch chiles are also called Anaheim chiles, and I think the Hatch variety partly get their flavor from where they are grown. Those are always roasted and skinned before they're eaten, and the aroma from roasting is heavenly. They're grown as both mild and hot (mild does have heat, a bit more perhaps that poblano, but it isn't uncomfortably hot). I buy these in bulk, already roasted, then freeze them in 1 pound bags. I pull a few out of the bag and use them in quesadillas (tortillas with a bit of cheese and maybe chicken or beef or peppers, a slim filling and it sticks to itself because of the cheese). I add them to a mix of hamburger, onions, seasoning, etc. that I use in tacos or burritos. I know if you're not from the US these dishes may take some translation (many have origins in Mexico or the desert Southwest, but there are some we think are Mexican that the Mexicans had never heard of!)

There are lots of other types of peppers, like the tiny little red chiles and such; I haven't grown any of those. The best way to distinguish them is that I use the bigger fleshy vegetable type more than the small hot or dry seasoning type. I have a few dishes where I use ground red pepper, but I bought it that way, I didn't grow and grind it.

Hope this helps!

SRS