11 Dried Chili Peppers, Names, Heat and How to Use Them

What are the main types of dried chiles?

Most dried chiles are fresh pods with a second name. UF/IFAS says a poblano ripened and dried takes the name ancho¹, and NMSU's Chile Pepper Institute defines chipotle as a smoke-dried red jalapeño². So a recipe can ask you for an ancho while the market sign says poblano.

The name swap runs the other way too. NMSU notes that the poblano in US produce markets is a green ancho or mulato, sold fresh², so the pod you roast in August and the leathery one you soak in January come from the same plant.

Find the fresh pepper first; it tells you the heat and the flavor family before you open the bag. The Mexican peppers hub has most of these fresh forms, and the table above pairs each dried name with its pod.

Three groups cover almost every bag you will meet on your store's shelf:

• Mexican dried chiles. Ancho, mulato, pasilla, guajillo, chipotle, árbol and cascabel. NMSU describes mole, the sauce most of them end up in, as a spicy sauce of chiles and unsweetened chocolate².
• New Mexico red. Long pods ripened red, then strung into ristras or ground into powder³. Green New Mexico chile, dehydrated, becomes chile pasado instead².
• Peruvian ajíes. Ají amarillo dries into ají mirasol, and ají panca sells mainly in its dried form, prized for sauces and for its color⁴.

Tiny wild pods sit outside these groups. NMSU calls the chiltepín a wild piquin, also sold as bird pepper, and usually round²; in the lab test below it came out the hottest of the four dried chiles.

How hot do dried chile peppers get?

Hotter on paper than you might expect, because lab figures often count heat per gram of dry pod. A Mexican HPLC study measured dried chiles by dry weight and got figures well above the usual ranges, a gap the authors themselves point out⁵.

Read the gap, not the exact numbers, when you compare your bag to a chart. Iowa State puts chile de árbol at 15,000–30,000 SHU⁶, and the dry-weight test above found about 194,600⁵. The ranking holds better than the figures: in that study árbol came out about ten times hotter than ancho (194,592 ÷ 19,336)⁵.

Weather moved the numbers too. Grown under heat stress, the same guajillo rose to about 69,200 SHU and the árbol fell to about 141,100⁵. Two bags of one chile from two harvests can taste different, and nothing on the label tells you which year you bought.

Here is what that means at the stove. Drying removes water, not heat, so a spoonful of ground ancho carries the heat of a lot more fresh poblano than a spoonful of chopped fresh pod would. Start with less than the recipe asks if you swap dried for fresh, then add more after a taste.

How do you rehydrate dried chiles?

Pull the stem, shake out the seeds, rinse, then soak in boiling water for 30 minutes. That is NMSU's method for red chile sauce made from dried pods⁷, and it works the same way for any large pod in the table.

1Stem cap: pull it off first⁷2Seeds: shake them out⁷3Leathery skin: softens in 30 minutes of boiling water⁷

1. Stem cap: pull it off first⁷
2. Seeds: shake them out⁷
3. Leathery skin: softens in 30 minutes of boiling water⁷

Before you start, put on gloves. The National Center for Home Food Preservation tells you to wear plastic or rubber gloves and keep your hands off your face while you handle or cut hot peppers⁸.

1. 1

   Pick sound pods

   Use dry pods in good condition; skip any with mold, insect damage or decay.⁷

2. 2

   Stem and seed

   Pull off the stems and shake the seeds out of the pods.⁷

3. 3

   Wash

   Wash the pods in warm water, lifting them out and changing the water several times.⁷

4. 4

   Soak 30 minutes

   Cover the pods with boiling water for 30 minutes, until the pulp feels soft and slips easily off the skin.⁷

5. 5

   Blend and strain

   Blend with enough fresh hot water for a smooth purée, then press it through a sieve to catch bits of peel.⁷

6. 6

   Simmer

   Simmer the purée for 10 minutes before you use or store it.⁷

Plan on 12 to 14 large pods for about 1 pint of purée⁷. That purée is the dried chile paste many recipes start from. Notice that NMSU blends the pods with fresh hot water, not the soaking water⁷.

The whole trip from bag to sauce is one straight line, and every arrow below is a step NMSU spells out:

What can you make with dried peppers?

Three things, depending on how far you take the pod. Grind it dry and you have chile powder, which is what New Mexico's red chiles become once dried³; the chili powder types page sorts the jars on the shelf. Soak and blend it and you have the purée above, the base of an easy red paste.

Keep it whole and you have a ristra, the long string of dried New Mexican pods NMSU describes as both storage and decoration². Pods stay on the string through winter and come off one at a time for cooking⁷. A 2-foot ristra takes about 130 New Mexican pods, and a 1-foot string of tiny de árbol pods takes about 800⁷.

A worked example: red enchilada sauce from one pint of purée

NMSU turns the purée into enchilada sauce with a short list⁷. For 2 cups of sauce, you need:

• 1 cup of chile purée and 1 cup of water
• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil and ½ teaspoon of salt
• 1 garlic clove and ½ teaspoon of dried oregano, both optional

Mix everything but the oregano and simmer gently for 10 minutes, stirring often. Add the oregano and give it another 5 to 7 minutes⁷. One pint of purée holds 2 cups, so your 12 to 14 pods make enough for two batches, about 4 cups of sauce in all.

Which dried chile should you pick, and when?

Pick by the job you have for it, then by the heat you want. The table at the top gives you the heat; this list gives you the match.

• You want a mild, deep sauce or mole. Reach for ancho or pasilla, both in Iowa State's or Arizona's 1,000–1,500 SHU band³⁶.
• You want smoke. Chipotle is the only pod in the table dried over smoke²; buy it dry for grinding or canned in adobo for a ready sauce.
• You want clear heat in small doses. Chile de árbol, at 15,000–30,000 SHU, runs ten times past ancho or more⁶. One or two pods season a whole pot.
• You want a lot of red sauce. Red New Mexico pods, at 500–2,500 SHU³, let you use a dozen at once without a fire in the pan.
• You cook Peruvian dishes. Ají mirasol and ají panca are the dried forms your recipe means⁴.

If a store has none of these, you can dry peppers yourself from fresh pods of the same kind. A red-ripe poblano you dry at home still becomes an ancho.

What goes wrong with dried chiles?

Most trouble you will run into comes from moisture or from pods nobody meant you to eat. Run through this before you soak a batch.

How long do dried chiles keep?

Months, not forever, and your kitchen's warmth decides where in that span you land. The National Center for Home Food Preservation gives dried foods 4 months to 1 year in a cool, dry, dark place, and says heat shortens that: most dried fruit keeps about a year at 60°F but about 6 months at 80°F, and dried vegetables keep about half as long as fruit⁹.

So a bag of anchos in a warm cupboard above the stove sits at the short end of that range. Move the bag to a dark shelf away from the oven, or into the freezer, and you buy yourself time.

Check the jars now and then. The NCHFP points out that dried food can pull moisture back in even when it looks bone dry⁹, and a soft, bendy pod in a jar that used to rattle is your sign.