Pasilla chile: nearly black, with raisin and cocoa

The pasilla is the dried chilaca: long, narrow, rippled, and once dried, so dark it reads black and so wrinkled that its name comes from pasa, raisin.

It is also the dried chile with the most complex flavor of the ones used every day, and the one most likely to be mislabeled in an American store.

What it tastes like

Raisin, prune, cocoa and tobacco, over a faintly bitter base that in the right amount is not a flaw but the point.

Blended, it makes a nearly black, glossy salsa with a depth closer to a mole than to a table salsa. If you had to impress someone with a single salsa, this is the chile to do it with.

How hot it is

1,000 to 4,000 Scoville units: less than a medium jalapeño. It is here for flavor and color, not for heat. Two or three toasted chiles de árbol alongside will add bite without touching the profile.

The label problem

Three names get tangled, and two of them cost money:

Pasilla ≠ poblano. In parts of the US and in some markets, fresh poblano is sold as “pasilla”. The dried poblano is the ancho, not the pasilla.

Pasilla ≠ pasilla de Oaxaca. The Oaxacan one is a different chile: smoked, shorter, wider and considerably hotter. It is what chintextle is made from. Outside Oaxaca the nearest approximation is regular pasilla plus two or three morita chiles for the smoke.

When buying, look for something long, narrow, heavily wrinkled and nearly black.

The chile that does not warn you

Almost every dried chile changes color as it toasts, and that shift tells you when to stop. Guajillo goes from matte to bright; ancho puffs. The pasilla is already black, so you see nothing.

The only reliable signal is smell. At ten to fifteen seconds a side it starts to smell sweet, almost like chocolate. That is the moment. If the smell turns acrid, it has burned — and because this chile carries natural bitterness, a burned one makes the salsa genuinely unpleasant.

Toast it over medium-low heat rather than medium-high, purely to buy yourself more reaction time.

Deveining matters here

In the pasilla the veins are distinctly bitter. Snip it open along its natural fold with scissors, pull the stem with the placenta attached, shake out the seeds.

Vinegar suits it unusually well

Pasilla is sweet and slightly bitter with no acidity of its own. Two teaspoons of apple cider vinegar at the end lift the entire salsa: the acid cuts the sweetness, makes the raisin notes read more clearly, and stops the result from feeling cloying.

Same reason a mole carries a note of vinegar or sour fruit.

The cotija is not a garnish

Crumbled cotija over a pasilla salsa is a classic pairing and it works by contrast: the salsa is dark, sweet and soft; the cheese is white, salty and sharp. Each pushes against the other.

No cotija? Any dry salty cheese does the same job — aged Mexican queso añejo, or even parmesan, purists notwithstanding.

What to use it for

Tortilla soup, where it is both the base and the fried strips on top. Tlacoyos and sopes, a spoonful with cotija and onion. Barbacoa, since pasilla and lamb suit each other. Black beans, two spoonfuls in the pot in the last ten minutes.

Buying and storing

Flexible, uniformly near-black. If it snaps when you bend it, it has lost its aroma.

Be careful with ones that look flat black and opaque: those may be old pasillas or mislabeled mulatos. The light test settles it — mulato reads brown, pasilla reads black.