The Secret To Extra Flavorful Chili Is This Spicy Addition

Chili is one of those recipes that can handle having a bunch of ingredients tossed in together haphazardly, but is at its best when you know exactly how to cultivate the best flavors for it. As we've learned many times before, everyone cooks up their own homemade chili a bit differently. If you're looking to elevate the spice levels of yours, there's one key ingredient to use to do so — cayenne pepper.

Cayenne pepper powder is the secret to leveling up both the flavor and the heat in your chili. In fact, we spoke to actor and chili expert Brian Baumgartner in honor of his partnership with Bush's Beans and Eventbrite to get further insight on making flavorful chili with a good kick and he explained exactly why cayenne is vital to that equation. When asked about the singular best ingredient to give chili more heat, he said, "For me, it's cayenne pepper. You can add as much as you want. It mixes better with all the other spices and the flavors. If you're looking for something spicy, that's how I go."

Now, when it comes to adding spices to your chili, doing it early is absolutely crucial to the process as this will allow them to provide the soup with much more flavor by the time the dish is complete. However, when it comes to adding even more heat to chili, several other methods actually come much later in the process. For example, hot sauce should be reserved for much later in the cooking process — or even after you've dished the chili into your bowl — as it will largely go to waste if you add it any sooner. "Hot sauce doesn't blend in and make a really cohesive, full flavor; it distracts," Baumgartner warned. "But if you're talking about adding it like you would a garnish, go for it. If the chili is there and you just want it to be a little spicier, add it similar to sour cream or jalapenos."

This brings up another ingredient commonly used to spice up chili in the form of jalapenos. While jalapenos are getting less spicy as time goes on, they are a great choice to add to chili and can be added either early into the process – alongside ingredients like onions, tomatoes, and garlic — or later on as a garnish, as Baumgartner alluded to. While the former will provide your chili with a more ingrained boost in spice, the latter helps the pepper's fresh flavor stand out much more and can make it a truly great contributor to the recipe.