While on vacation, I purchased a book by Jane Butel entitled “Chili Madness” because I love chili! The book includes starters, chili, sides, breads, and what to do with leftovers. The book, if you look for it, is $12.95 U.S. All of the chili recipes call for using pure chile powder as opposed to store bought.
“Why?” you ask. Because the chile powder you buy in the store contains other ingredients. These include salt, oregano, cumin and garlic powder. She recommends using pure chile powder because the flavor will of the chile’s will be more intense. The odd thing is that there is no recipe on how to make your own. So I went in search of recipes on the internet.
I found that most of the recipes are for the chile powder with the extra added ingredients. I only found a couple of recipes for pure. Using what I have here at home, I put together this recipe!
Ingredients
3 dried chile de arbol pods
3 dried guajillo chile pods
3 dried pasilla ancho chile pods
The chiles
You will also need one pair of rubber gloves, which are essential to making this due to the oils in the chiles. The oils in the chiles can burn your eyes, your nose and your mouth…so be careful!
Donning the rubber gloves, pull the tops off of each chile. Using a very sharp knife, slice the chile down the side. Remove the seeds and the veins.
Seeded, and topped
Discard the seeds and tops
Start by grinding the chiles for about a minute. Then shake it the grinder without removing the lid. Do this again about 5 more times until there are no skins left. What you will have will be an amazing pure chile powder! When done, let this sit for a bit so that the “dust settles.” If you don’t you could be breathing this in and that would not be any fun!
So, here is what it looks like when it is done!
The finished product
Now can you guess what I will be making for dinner? Chili! I will be making something a bit different and adding a special ingredient! So, stay tuned for my upcoming chili recipe!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great Monday!
Life in the Foothills 
[…] Pale Ale 1 28 oz. can each of diced tomatoes, pinto beans, kidney beans Pure chile powder, click here for the recipe! 1 1/2 tsp. Mexican oregano 1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin 1/2 tsp. Spanish paprika 1/4 […]
Very good Barb. I could do this with a couple of the chilis Richard McGary sent.
Upon reflection, now that I know how to do this, I need to do a study of chiles and their heat factor…This blend was pretty mild but still flavorful. Look for tomorrow’s post on the chili I made using this pure chile powder blend! My best to you Conor – B
beautiful, indeed! 🙂 have you ever heard of the “piment d’Espelette”? It’s very famous in France, I visited the village and I tasted some chili dark chocolate, simply yummy… 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espelette_pepper
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Thanx for stopping by my playground & my very best… Cheers! 🙂 Mélanie
Melanie – Thank you! I looked this pepper up and it looks very similar to a jalapeno that has turned red. Interesting too is that it is a mild chile! You have a lovely playground, and my best to you as well – 😉
I love all things spicy so will give this a try. Thanks Barb! 🙂
The chiles I used were pretty mild…you could spice this up heat wise by using more of the chile de arbole than I did.
Thanks Barb. That I will do. My philosophy is that it can’t be too spicy as long as I can still taste the food. 😉
🙂 Let me know how you like it!
Will do.
Many thanks!
Such beautiful colors! I would love to make this and share with friends, too.
Intense flavors and beautiful colors! Let me know how this goes for you!
OooooH! Love chile! Looking forward to your recipe! 😆
Coming soon!
Seems like a simple way to bypass the store offered chili powders and especially if one wishes to bypass all the other added ingredients. Thanks for the share and look forward to the chili recipe you mentioned will be upcoming.
Very easy to do! Better flavors too!