Chili Flakes

This is arguably one of the most important components of making chili crisp. It sets the tone for flavors and heat level, and it creates the unique identity of chili crisps. It’s important not to use chili powder for this because we want to see chunks of chili flakes. The coarser the flakes, the better. If you can’t find chili flakes, I would recommend getting dried chiles and breaking them apart in a food processor. You can just use one kind, but I highly recommend playing with a blend of different varieties to maximize flavors. Following, I provide a list of chili flakes with a range of Scoville Heat Units (SHU), a metric to understand how spicy each pepper is. This number is measured by the number of times capsaicin, the main component that makes peppers spicy, needs to be diluted by sugar-water. It ranges anywhere from 0 to millions!