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Fresh red chilli

Dried chillies

Fresh red chilli

Capsicum annuum / C. chinense / C. frutescens

Fresh ripe red chilli, from mild long chillies to fiery bird's eye or Scotch bonnet, for pastes, sauces and garnish.

Also called: red chili, red chile, bird's eye chilli, thai chili

  • Hot & numbing
  • Fruity & sour
  • Herbal & green
  • Hot
Buying & storing180 recipes

Photo: MTur Destinos, via Wikimedia Commons (public-domain)

Flavour and aroma

sharp, fiery, fruity, fresh. Hot and fruity.

Heat
Hot
Forms
fresh, dried, paste

How to use it

  • use raw

    Slice thinly into fish sauce and lime (nam pla prik) or salads; leave seeds in for full heat.

  • crush · Dry grinding technique

    Pound in a mortar for curry pastes, som tam and sambal; bruise whole chillies and drop them into curries to add heat without a lot of chopped chilli.

  • fry · Tadka (tempering) technique

    Fry sliced chillies briefly with garlic at the start of a stir-fry; stand back, as the fumes sting.

  • Pounded into sambals and curry pastes
  • Sliced over noodles, salads and soups
  • Blended into hot sauces
  • Whole Scotch bonnets simmered in Caribbean stews

Identifying good quality

Small, slender chillies 2–4 cm long, glossy red (or green when unripe), firm with taut skin. Wrinkled or soft chillies are old. Smaller generally means hotter.

  • Not to be confused with Scotch bonnet pepper: Scotch bonnets are lantern-shaped and much hotter, with a fruity, tropical aroma.
  • Not to be confused with Green chilli: Green chillies are unripe; heat depends on the variety.

Origin and history

Origin: Capsicum is native to the Americas; bird's eye chillies were carried to Southeast Asia by Portuguese and Spanish trade in the 16th century.. Grown and used: Grown across Southeast Asia, Africa and South Asia; used fresh in Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Indonesian and Filipino cooking..

After chillies arrived in Southeast Asia in the 16th century, small, very hot varieties became central to the region's cooking. In Thailand bird's eye chillies (prik kee noo) are pounded into curry pastes and nam prik, sliced into fish-sauce dips, and crushed into som tam.

Commonly told; not firmly documented

In masalas, pastes and sauces

Recipes with fresh red chilli

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