How I make chili powder

I was asked to provide details about how I make chili powder and figured this would be the perfect venue for a tutorial of sorts.

Now, not all folks are going to want to add everything that I do, but the toasting and grinding of the peppers is about the same for all.

Before I blend my chili powder I take all of the dried peppers and process them a bit.

By processing I mean remove the stems, seeds, and any noticeable bad spots  Also, make sure to only process one type of pepper at a time.  You don’t want to mix the peppers up at this point.  The goal here is to make several different types of pepper powders to make a blend later.

I then place the peppers on a cookie sheet and toast for around 15 minutes at 250 degrees in the oven.  This further dries the peppers to the point that they can be ground into a powder.  Now when the peppers are first removed from the oven, they’ll still feel a bit pliable.  Allow them to cool and they should be crunchy.  WORD OF WARNING!!!  Do not allow the peppers to begin to scorch, or worse, burn!  You’ll run everyone out of the house coughing and gagging…  Yep, I learned the hard way!

Now that we have the peppers ready to grind, get out the trusty blender and begin dropping the peppers into the pitcher portion of the blender.  You can crunch them a bit by hand to get a lot in there.

Now, this blender looks pretty full, but…

Looks are deceiving!  There’s a reason you need to toast a LOT of peppers if you want to make a lot of chili powder…  At this point you’ll want to sift your powder into a bowl to remove membrane pieces and seeds that may not have ground up.

This part can get a bit sneezy!  I usually wear a respirator when I make chili powder and also do it when no one else is at home.  Want to make a spouse or partner really mad?  Let them walk into the kitchen about the time you’re shaking pepper dust through a sieve!

OK, you’ve ground all of your peppers, have them all bagged up and marked separately, and you’re ready to make chili powder!

Here’s one of my recipes.  This one is a bit on the spicy side, but it’s really good.  You can tone it down a bit by deleting the cayenne, or just backing off of the amount of it.

1 oz	Ancho pepper powder
0.5 oz	Cayenne pepper powder
2 oz	Guajillo pepper powder
0.5 oz	Dried and crushed Mexican Oregano
0.75 oz	Toasted and ground Cumin seed
0.75 oz	Garlic powder

Now, you’ll notice that everything is in ounces and not teaspoons or tablespoons.  The reason I do this is so that I can get repeatability each time I make this recipe.  I do this for almost all of my recipes since most measuring spoons are full at level by some folks, and full at heaping by others.  weight is weight.  Most of the time I measure in grams, but for this venue I’ll go with ounces.

Now mix it all up and make some chili!

Got any questions, just give me a shout!