Buying Mexican chiles in the US

Everything else on this site assumes you have the chile in your hand. This page is about getting it there, and about the specific ways that goes wrong in the United States.

The labeling is unreliable

This is the first thing to know, and it is not a small problem.

“Pasilla” on fresh poblanos. In California and much of the Southwest, fresh poblano peppers are routinely labeled pasilla or “pasilla pepper.” Real pasilla is a dried chilaca — long, thin, wrinkled and nearly black. If the bin says pasilla and holds large, glossy, heart-shaped green peppers, those are poblanos.

“Ancho” on mulatos. Ancho and mulato are both dried poblanos and look nearly identical in a bag. They get mixed at packing. Hold one up to a light: ancho glows reddish, mulato glows brown-black. The test works through plastic, in the aisle.

“Chipotle” with no further detail. Could be morita (small, wine-red, flexible) or meco (large, grey-brown, brittle). They are not interchangeable — if a recipe wants meco and you have morita, use double.

“Chile negro” on pasilla. Same chile, different name. Not an error, but it confuses people looking for pasilla.

Where to look

Mexican groceries are the best option by a wide margin. Better selection, higher turnover, and much cheaper — often a third of supermarket prices for the same chile.

Large supermarkets stock guajillo, ancho, chile de árbol and sometimes pasilla, usually in small cellophane bags in the international aisle rather than with the produce.

The Asian aisle is where you will often find chile japonés, sold as “Japanese dried chili” for Sichuan and Thai cooking. Same chile, sometimes cheaper.

Online is the answer for the ones nobody stocks: costeño, catarina, puya, chipotle meco. Prices are higher and quality is generally good, since the sellers are specialists.

What to check before you pay

Flexibility. A good dried chile bends without cracking. A guajillo that snaps in half has been sitting for a year and has lost its volatile oils.

The exception is the chipotle meco, which is brittle on purpose. And the rattling chiles below.

Color. Deep and even. Matte, dusty, greyish chiles are old. Black patches mean scorching or mold.

Smell. Through the bag if you can. A good dried chile smells clearly of itself. One that smells of nothing has nothing left to give.

The rattle test. Cascabel and catarina should rattle when you shake the bag, because the seeds have come loose inside the dried pod. A cascabel that does not rattle is older, not fresher — it has absorbed moisture. This is the most direct freshness check available for any chile and it works through sealed packaging.

Whole pods. Broken chiles have been leaking aromatics. Thin-walled ones like costeño break easily and a bag full of fragments is a bag that has been handled a lot.

Fresh chiles

Jalapeños are everywhere and have a specific problem: US commercial growers have been selecting for milder, larger fruit for decades, so a supermarket jalapeño is often near 2,500 Scoville when the range tops out at 8,000.

Look for corking — fine pale lines on the skin. Those chiles stayed on the plant longer and are hotter. In Mexico they are preferred; in US stores they are sometimes culled as blemished.

Serranos are widely available and are the better choice for raw salsas: thinner, cleaner, sharper.

Poblanos are common. Habaneros are common. Chilaca, manzano and güero are difficult — manzano turns up in Peruvian and Bolivian markets as rocoto more reliably than in Mexican ones.

What you genuinely cannot get

Worth saying plainly, because a lot of recipes pretend otherwise.

Pulque. Fermented agave sap, used in salsa borracha. It ferments continuously and has a shelf life of days. It does not travel and fresh pulque effectively does not exist in the US. Canned versions are a shadow. Use a dark Mexican lager instead.

Fresh chilaca. Occasionally in California. Mostly not.

Chicatana ants. Foraged two nights a year after the first rains in Oaxaca. There is no substitute and nobody should pretend there is.

Pasilla de Oaxaca. Smoked, and a different chile from regular pasilla despite the name. Specialist online sellers only.

Truly fresh epazote and hoja santa. Both turn up dried, which is not the same thing. Mexican groceries in Texas and California sometimes have fresh.

What to buy first

If you are starting a dried chile shelf, four chiles cover most of Mexican salsa making:

1. Guajillo — body, color, mild. The workhorse.
2. Ancho — sweetness and depth.
3. Chile de árbol — heat.
4. Morita — smoke.

Those four in combination will make most of the red salsas on this site. Add puya when you want more heat without changing the flavor, and pasilla when you start making mole.

Storing them

Sealed glass jars, dark cupboard, dry. Not the fridge — it is humid, and humidity is what makes dried chiles mold.

Most keep about a year. Buy in quantities you will actually use: a pound of guajillo is cheap and a pound of guajillo going stale in a cupboard is still a waste.