Chilli flakes

• pul biber

  Turkish

  Turkish pul biber is oilier and much milder than generic crushed chilli, and Aleppo pepper is a particular kind of it.

• filfil ahmar mat-hun

  Arabic

Pungent with a dry fruity sweetness, and — unlike powder — delivered unevenly. A dish seasoned with flakes has hot spots, which is sometimes exactly what is wanted and sometimes the reason a recipe specifies powder instead.

Dry and fruity, stronger than powder because more of the fruit structure survives crushing. Smoked and sweated formats smell markedly different from plain ones.

Bright to deep red with visible pale seeds, unless deseeded. Gochugaru is a notably vivid red; Urfa pepper is almost black-purple.

Coarse fragments with seeds, ranging from near-powder to pieces several millimetres across. The coarseness is the product decision that most affects how the heat arrives.

• Capsaicin — The pungent principle, concentrated in the placental tissue — so whether a format is deseeded matters more than which chilli it came from in some cases.
• Capsanthin — The red carotenoid, fat-soluble and light-sensitive.

Bloom them in warm oil if you want the heat and colour spread through a dish; scatter them at the end if you want to taste them individually. Add off direct heat — flakes scorch faster than powder because the fragments sit against the pan. Start at half what the recipe says unless the jar names a format you know, because the category spans a fiftyfold range of pungency and the label almost never narrows it.

The format for heat you want to notice. Flakes deliver pungency in bursts rather than evenly, which suits finishing — scattered over pizza, pasta, eggs or grilled vegetables — and suits infusions, where they are bloomed in oil and the oil does the distributing. Named formats have their own settled roles: gochugaru in kimchi and Korean stews, pul biber on the Turkish table, Aleppo pepper folded through Levantine dishes by the tablespoon, peperoncino in aglio e olio. Where a dish needs even heat and colour throughout rather than bursts, ground chilli is usually the better choice.

• blooming — Flakes bloomed in warm oil give up both heat and colour into the fat, which then distributes evenly — the standard way to get powder-like distribution from a flake product. Chilli oil is this taken to its conclusion.
• frying — Scorch quickly and turn acrid, faster than powder because the fragments are larger and sit in contact with the pan. Add off the heat or into liquid.
• boiling — Soften and release their heat gradually over a long cook, which is gentler than the same quantity of powder added at the start.

Judge by colour and by smell together. Good flakes are vividly red and smell fruity when rubbed; faded brown flakes have aged. Do not use heat as a test — capsaicin outlasts everything else, so a jar can be simultaneously stale and painfully hot.

• Colour faded from red towards brown
• A flat, dusty smell instead of a fruity one
• Clumping, particularly in oiled formats
• A rancid smell in oiled formats, which plain flakes will not develop

• Photo-oxidation of the red carotenoids
• Loss of the modest volatile aroma fraction
• Rancidity in oiled formats specifically
• Moisture uptake and clumping

Buy named rather than generic, and buy whole if you will actually crush them. The generic-versus-named distinction matters far more here than whole-versus-flaked: gochugaru and Aleppo pepper are specific products with predictable behaviour, and "chilli flakes" is a shrug. Crushing whole dried chillies yourself gives the freshest result and lets you decide about the seeds, which is the decision the label never discloses.

• A named format — gochugaru, pul biber, Aleppo, peperoncino — rather than the bare words "chilli flakes".
• Vivid colour rather than dull brown.
• Visible flesh rather than a jar that is mostly seed.
• A stated coarseness, which matters for gochugaru in particular.
• For oiled formats, a recent date, since the oil is what fails first.

Generic chilli flakes carry no useful specification at all — not variety, not pungency, not seed content. Named formats do, and the gap is the single most useful thing to know when buying. A jar labelled gochugaru tells you the variety, the drying method, the approximate heat and usually the coarseness; a jar labelled chilli flakes tells you the cut.

Solanaceae

A cut rather than a plant. Chilli flakes are whatever variety the producer dried and crushed, which is why the category spans everything from mild Turkish pul biber to fierce bird-eye flakes.

The Americas, as for all Capsicum. The flake formats that matter commercially — gochugaru, pul biber, Aleppo — developed in Korea and the eastern Mediterranean long after chillies arrived there.

• China — major producer
• India — major producer
• Republic of Korea — notable producer. Gochugaru production, where sun-drying and deseeding are part of the definition of the product rather than optional steps.
• Turkey — notable producer. Pul biber and Maraş and Urfa pepper, where oiling and salting are traditional.
• Spain — notable producer

Picked ripe and red. Some formats — Urfa pepper notably — are sweated after picking, which darkens them and changes the flavour markedly.

1. Drying — Sun-dried or mechanically dried. Sun-drying is part of the specification for gochugaru rather than merely a method.Why: Reduces moisture and, for some formats, develops colour.
2. Deseeding — Seeds and placental tissue are removed for some formats and left in for others.Why: The single biggest lever on heat, and the one least often declared on a label.
3. Crushing — Broken to flakes rather than milled to powder, at a coarseness that varies enormously by format.Why: Coarseness determines how the heat is delivered — bursts from coarse flakes, even distribution from fine ones.
4. Oiling and salting — Some Turkish and Syrian formats have oil and salt added as part of the traditional product.Why: Preserves colour and softens the texture. It also means the product cannot be measured as though it were pure spice.

Traded on colour, pungency and the proportion of seed. Named formats carry their own specifications — gochugaru is graded on coarseness and on whether it is intended for kimchi or for seasoning — which is far more informative than the generic category.

The same colourant history as chilli powder applies, though flakes are somewhat harder to falsify because the structure is visible. Excess seed used to make weight is the more common problem, and it is visible in the jar.

Grown as an annual. The flake trade generally uses varieties selected for colour and flesh thickness as well as heat, since a thin-fleshed chilli produces flakes that are mostly seed.

Warm growing season with a dependable dry period for drying, as for all dried chilli products.

Chilli flakes as a category follow the worldwide spread of Capsicum after the Columbian exchange. The named formats that matter are much more recent and much more specific: gochugaru is inseparable from the development of modern kimchi, and the Turkish and Syrian pepper flakes are regional products with their own histories.

Traded as a bulk commodity in generic form and as named regional products at a premium. The gap between the two in both price and specificity is large.