Manufacturers consider the recipes for their chili powders—including the kinds of chiles they use—to be proprietary information. What other criteria can you use to choose a chili powder?
Some culinary historians argue that if chili powder had not been developed as a commercial product (that is, if cooks had no option other than to make their own), chili con carne would never have become a common household dish. Fortunately, chili powder did become a commercial product, and the rest is culinary history. In fact, home cooks now have so many chili powders to choose from that we decided it was time to give them a blind tasting. We sampled ten products, including those most widely available in supermarkets and a few popular mail-order products. Through the tasting we hoped to determine whether some chili powders were preferable to others. Through research, we sought to understand why.
Defining Chili Powder
Chili powder is a curious product, often misunderstood. For one thing, the kind you find in the supermarket on the A-to-Z shelf of single herbs and spices is not itself a single spice, made only from powdered dried chiles. While there is no established formula for making chili powder, it typically consists of about 80 percent chile pepper blended with garlic powder, oregano, ground cumin seed, sometimes salt, and occasionally monosodium glutamate. Some blends even include traces of clove, allspice, anise, and coriander. Although a number of powders made solely from chiles can now be found in ethnic and specialty markets, we stuck to blends because they are what most Americans cook with.
Therefore, the key to a successful chili powder is a careful blending of the chiles, spices, and seasonings. No one component is meant to stand out boldly. In other words, a successful chili powder should contribute a complexity of flavors that can be hard to pinpoint and that work on different levels. Here at
Cook's, our idea of success was also an "independent" chili powder, capable of making a bowl of chili tasty with little or no help from other spices and seasonings. In other words, while we appreciated the idea of complexity of flavor, we also wanted some bravado.
For the most part, the results reinforced this estimation of an ideal chili powder. Those chili powders that delivered the most depth and assertiveness of flavor, otherwise described as "oomph," were the most highly rated. Unfortunately, only a few products were up to the task. Most were too subtle, leaving tasters wanting more spice and heat. A few tasters preferred the milder samples simply because they do not care for strong-flavored chili.
But while there may not be necessarily a right or wrong flavor profile for chili powder, there are some key elements that distinguish quality. First and foremost, fresh is flavor. Because, like most spices, chili powder contains volatile flavor components, it is important to purchase it from a source that has steady turnover. A busy supermarket or specialty spice store is probably where you'll find the freshest product.
Good chili powder depends less on the type of chile or chiles used in the blend than on their quality. Manufacturers of the three top-ranked products in the tasting credited their product's success to careful selection of quality chiles (although none were willing to give us more information about the types of chiles they use in their powder or about how the chiles are treated, since they consider this proprietary information).
There is really no great secret, however, as to the general kind of chiles used to make chili powders. The most common types are large pod-type red chiles, such as New Mexico, California, and pasilla chiles. On the heat level scale, these are at the dead bottom. (Most of the chiles used in chili powder average about 1,000 to 2,000 Scoville units, the standard measure for chile pepper heat. To compare, jalapeño chiles, which are not typically used in commercial chili powders, are rated at an average of 10,000 Scoville units.)
Most chili powder manufacturers buy the chiles for their chili powders dried and roasted to their specifications. Some manufacturers will have the chile seeds included in the grind, which is said to contribute a more nutty flavor. Others insist that the seeds be removed, claiming that they dilute the chile flavor and act as mere filler. The ground chiles are then blended with spices according to a specific formula and technique the manufacturer develops.
A third aspect of quality concerned salt content. Most of the less expensive chili powders in the tasting contained twice as much sodium as the more expensive brands. While this didn't seem to make them taste salty, the potency of their flavor was decidedly less assertive.
Finally, serious chili cooks rate a chili powder for its ability to contribute to the famed rich, bright color of a "bowl of red." While we found the brand that had the most intense red color lacking in flavor, this very lack may appeal to cooks who want to use it as a base on which to begin building a unique flavor profile. Ironically, the top-scoring product had a much deeper color, more like a rich rust, due to a caramelization process that occurs as the chiles and spices are blended This not only deepens the color but imparts a distinct, complex flavor that won tasters over easily.
See the Results
