McCormick Chipotle Chile Pepper Powder Review

I am not one for gimmicky, premixed or cop-out, season-it-for-me spices of any kind, but I think I accidentally found a winner! While shopping for the nearly fifty ingredients I wanted to use for pickling about a month back, I somehow accidentally ended up with this spice in the bags when I got home from the grocery store. It sat in the spice rack for a while until I could figure out what to do with it. I figured I could use it for an adobo of some kind, but I knew that this little shaker of punch-packed powder could make for some interesting items and possibly reinvent some old recipes as well.
The ingredients are simple enough. The shaker states, "CHIPOTLE CHILI PEPPERS, SILICONE DIOXIDE (ADDED TO MAKE FREE FLOWING). Awesome, two ingredients, one of which probably isn't good for me but, then again, neither is the 1/2 pound of butter I use in every recipe, so the silicone gets a free pass this time.

Recipe Coming Soon

I added this stuff to my Sascha Saxler-inspired German Potatoes and it woke them right up! They went from a side dish to a main event! They took on a deep smokey flavor that added a dimension to the vegetables and even a new edge to the vinegar. The heat it added wasn't bad either. It was a familiar jalapeno heat but it stuck around like a cayenne-type burn. By adding it I probably just completely obliterated any "German-ness" that the recipe had but good food is good food, right?
I added it to my standard salsa recipe and it gave the cilantro and even the jalapenos a new brightness but still added the deep smokiness. This one ingredient made it a completely different salsa.
This stuff is good. Deep, smokey, awesome. I may have accidentally purchased this magic powder, but I will definitely do it on purpose next time.


Aaron Oeth
The ProAm Kitchen