How To Spice Up Your Cooking With Jalapeño Powder

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Jalapeños may not rank among the world's hottest peppers (They're nowhere near the level of the now-ubiquitous ghost pepper), but their medium heat level and slightly vegetal flavor adds just the right amount of spice to enhance the taste of salsas and sandwiches. But, if you're willing to expand your horizons beyond fresh or pickled jalapeños, chef Miguel Olmedo suggests jalapeño powder to flavor an even wider variety of dishes. (As a bonus, you won't have to remove potentially painful jalapeño residue from your hands.)

Olmedo, who works as an instructor at the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts, said this dry ingredient can even be substituted for fresh peppers. As he told The Takeout, "When using jalapeño powder, the rule of thumb is that ¾ teaspoon equals one jalapeño." This applies if you're using a store-bought brand, like Badia jalapeño powder, but Olmedo added a caveat for anyone ambitious enough to make their own. Olmedo said jalapeños are at their hottest when picked from late spring to midsummer, and uou can tell if your jalapeños pack a hefty punch by checking the exteriors for white or brown lines (or veins, as he called them). "If you are dehydrating your own jalapeños and then turning them into a powder, remember if they were in season or not, then adjust the ¾ teaspoon amount on your recipe so it doesn't become extremely hot," he advised.

If you're using jalapeño powder as a shelf-stable substitute for fresh peppers, Miguel Olmedo suggested, "Recipes that benefit from using jalapeño powder are your salsas, guacamole, dry rub, and some sauces." Dry rub, in particular, could really benefit since there's no other way of incorporating fresh jalapeños into the mix while having it stay dry. Olmedo also mentioned a few surprising uses for the ingredient, such as mixing it into homemade pasta and bread dough, or flavoring beverages.

"The powder adds flavor without having chunks of jalapeño in the recipes ... You'll get a hit of green and the unexpected flavors and heat." Chopped jalapeños might work well in cornbread or biscuits, but you'd probably need something more subtle if you were making flaky pastry and wanted to spice it up a bit. Another use for jalapeño powder that you may not have considered is adding it to dessert recipes. Try incorporating half a teaspoon or so to a batch of cookies or brownies to add some heat to your sweet. Jalapeño powder can also boost both cake batter and frosting; and it makes a tasty, unique topping for ice cream or sorbet.

Adding jalapeño powder to a recipe is a lot easier than figuring out how to work in fresh or pickled jalapeños — so much so, in fact, that you may want to add it to everything. Hold up a moment, though. In Miguel Olmedo's experience, jalapeños (powdered or otherwise) complement certain flavors, but not others. As he opined, "Jalapeño pairs excellent with fresh mint, cilantro, basil, or thyme ... because the jalapeño powder complements the overall flavor profile." This means it might be a perfect addition to chimichurri, and could also be used to give your pesto a spicy edge without affecting the texture as fresh peppers might.

If you're making a dish where different herbs and spices all work together to create a very specific flavor, however, throwing in jalapeño powder willy-nilly might disrupt the balance. Nor might it play nicely with a delicate floral like lavender, or something licorice-y such as anise seed or tarragon. Olmedo also cautioned against using another herb, adding, "You wouldn't want to use rosemary with jalapeño as rosemary increases the heat index on the jalapeño powder." It's the opposite to mint. "With an herb like mint, the cooling and refreshing side of it tones down the heat from the jalapeño powder," Olmedo said.