Pasilla

• chile pasilla

  Spanish — Mexico

  Literally "little raisin", from the wrinkled skin and the dried-fruit smell. In parts of Mexico the fresh form — chilaca — is sold under its own name and the two are not connected by shoppers.

• chile negro

  Spanish — Mexico

  The common alternative name, from the colour. Not to be confused with the several other dark chillies sold as "negro" regionally.

• chilaca

  Spanish

  The fresh pepper, before drying. A recipe naming chilaca wants the fresh chilli and one naming pasilla wants the dried, and they are not substitutes.

Rich and rounded — dried fruit, cocoa and a slight bitterness that reads as depth rather than as a fault. Mild in heat, so it can be used in quantity, and its job in a sauce is body and darkness rather than either sweetness or brightness.

Raisin, prune and cocoa, with a faint herbal edge and none of the brightness of guajillo. Deeper and darker-smelling than any other common Mexican dried chilli.

Very dark brown to black with a matte, deeply wrinkled skin. Held up to light it shows a dark brown rather than the red of ancho, which is the quickest way to tell the two apart.

Thin-fleshed and leathery, more pliable than guajillo and less so than ancho. It purées reasonably well after soaking, though a fine sauce still benefits from straining.

• Capsaicin — The modest heat, concentrated in the placental tissue.
• Carotenoids and browning products — The very dark colour, from pigments plus the products of slow sugar browning during drying — which is also where much of the cocoa character comes from.

Toast briefly, soak, blend, and taste the soaking liquid before using it. Wipe the pods, tear off the stems and shake out the seeds, then a few seconds a side on a dry pan until the cocoa note lifts — and stop there, because pasilla is thinner than ancho and burns sooner, and its natural bitterness makes a burnt batch hard to detect until the sauce is finished. Soak twenty to thirty minutes and blend. The soaking water is darker and more bitter than guajillo's, so add it back by judgement rather than by default. Pasilla is almost never used alone: it supplies depth, ancho supplies sweetness and body, guajillo supplies colour and acidity, and a mole wants all three. Its one solo use is worth knowing — fried in thin strips until crisp and scattered over soup or beans, where the thin flesh that makes it awkward to purée becomes the point.

Mexican cooking, and specifically where depth is wanted: mole negro and mole poblano, adobos, table salsas, and fried in strips over soups and beans. It works with beef, pork, turkey, tomatillo, chocolate, raisin, almond and onion, and it is nearly always used alongside ancho and guajillo rather than alone — the three cover depth, sweetness and brightness respectively, which is why recipes that name one usually name all three.

• toasting — A few seconds a side on a dry pan lifts the cocoa note and makes the pod pliable. Pasilla burns faster than ancho because it is thinner, and burnt pasilla is bitter in a way that is hard to distinguish from its own natural bitterness until the sauce is finished.
• infusing — Soaking in hot water for twenty to thirty minutes softens it for blending. The soaking liquid is darker and more bitter than guajillo's and is added back more cautiously.
• grinding — Purées better than guajillo and less completely than ancho. A smooth mole is strained regardless, because all three are in it.

Bend a pod: a good one flexes like leather and smells of raisin and cocoa when torn, and an old one cracks and smells of dust. For powder, the smell is the only guide, since the colour is too dark to read.

• Pods that snap rather than bend.
• A dusty rather than fruity smell when a pod is torn.
• Small holes, webbing or fine powder in the bag, meaning pantry moths.
• Grey or white bloom on the surface, which is mould rather than the natural matte finish.

Buy whole, and for this chilli there is a reason beyond the usual one. Whole pods keep their aroma for a year or two against a few months for powder, which is the standard argument — but they can also be identified, and pasilla is the chilli most likely to be something else. A bag of dark, long, narrow, wrinkled pods is verifiably pasilla; a jar of dark powder is whatever the packer put in it. Powder is worth having only for dry rubs.

• Check the shape before anything else: long and narrow and near-black is pasilla, wide and heart-shaped and reddish is ancho whatever the label says.
• Pliable pods that bend without cracking.
• A raisin-and-cocoa smell through the bag or when a pod is torn.
• Whole pods rather than powder, which cannot be identified by eye and fades within months.
• Note that "pasilla de Oaxaca" is a different, smoked, much hotter chilli and is not a grade of this one.

Trade grading is on length, colour and freedom from blemish, and none of it reaches a retail bag. Heat is not graded and does not need to be at this level. The distinction that matters to a buyer is not grade but variety, and no grading system addresses it.

Solanaceae

A Capsicum annuum cultivar bearing long, narrow, slightly curved fruits of fifteen to twenty centimetres that ripen dark brown. The fresh pepper is the chilaca; dried, the skin becomes deeply wrinkled and near-black.

Central Mexico, where Capsicum annuum was domesticated and where the chilaca has been grown and dried for centuries.

• MX (Michoacán, Jalisco, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes) — origin
• MX (Oaxaca) — notable producer. Producing the separate smoked pasilla de Oaxaca rather than this chilli.
• US (California) — notable producer

Hand-picked at full ripeness in late summer and autumn, when the fruit has turned from dark green to brown. Underripe pods dry to a poorer colour and a thinner flavour.

1. Ripening on the plant — Fruits left until dark brown, when sugars and pigments have both accumulated.Why: The raisin depth pasilla is bought for develops in this period.
2. Sun-drying — Pods dried whole on racks or mats for one to two weeks until the skin is deeply wrinkled and near-black. No smoke — that is the separate Oaxacan product.Why: Preservation, and concentration of the sugars into the cocoa-and-raisin character.
3. Grading and packing — Sorted by length, colour and pliability, and packed whole. Broken pods go to powder.Why: Whole pliable pods are the premium product; the powder is a by-product.

Graded on length, colour and pliability rather than heat, and none of it appears on a retail bag. The practical grading problem for a buyer outside Mexico is not quality but identity, since mislabelling as ancho is common.

Substitution rather than adulteration, and it is systematic rather than occasional: ancho is widely sold as pasilla in the United States, and has been for long enough that some recipes written there assume the wrong pod. The check is physical — pasilla is long and narrow and near-black, ancho is wide and reddish — and it is the only check available, because the label is the problem.

An annual field crop, irrigated, with fruits picked at full dark-brown ripeness over several passes. Yields per plant are lower than for the wide-fruited chillies, which is part of why pasilla generally costs more than ancho.

Warm and dry with strong sun for drying, the same central-plateau conditions the other Mexican dried chillies depend on. Humidity during the drying period is the limiting factor rather than anything in the growing season.

Part of the pre-Columbian Mexican dried-chilli tradition, in which drying preserved a seasonal crop and the distinct named chillies became separate culinary ingredients rather than grades of one thing. Pasilla belongs to the central highlands and to the mole tradition, and like ancho and guajillo it stayed regional for four centuries after Capsicum itself spread worldwide — what travelled in the sixteenth century was the plant and the general idea of chilli, not the named Mexican varieties.

A modern export trade following Mexican cooking rather than a historic one, and smaller than the trade in ancho and guajillo. Its most notable feature is the systematic mislabelling in United States retail, which is a trade fact rather than a culinary one.

Chillies generally carry a long traditional-medicine record in Mesoamerican practice. Recorded as tradition and context, not as a health claim, and SpiceHQ holds no source specific to pasilla.