Habanero powder

This weekend I finally got around to doing something I'd meant to for ages - making some hot chilli (or chile for you Americans) powder.

I didn't want to turn the blender into a make-everything-taste-like-chilli machine, so I picked up a cheapo coffee grinder and went to town on half a jar of red habaneros that I'd dried a while back.

Most instructions for grinding chilli recommend doing it outdoors and/or wearing a dust mask. Now I understand why. Inhaling airborne habanero powder is not much fun. It makes you cough and sneeze and sends your snot-generation system into overdrive. It's not even a fun chilli-burn sensation either - it's more like inhaling odourless smoke.

The end product is worth it though...



The jar on the left shows the amount of dried product needed to create the amount of powder in the jar on the right. It goes from a dark red to a bright orange during grinding. Heat-wise, it's about as strong as you can get without using extracts. Definitely hotter than the peppers were when fresh, but the heat tends to stay in one place rather than spreading all over your mouth as it does when eating a raw hab.

Flavour-wise, it tastes very similar to Blair's Death Rain (not surprisingly since red savinas are the main ingredient of Death Rain), but without the extra spices. You lose a lot of the fruity flavour of fresh habs, but the smell is bloody nice and you don't have the vinegar flavour that you'd get from using a sauce.