Homemade Chile Powder

My son and I ground some fresh chuck roast into ground beef this morning so that he could cook burgers. He did and they were GREAT!!!! I was asking SWMBO what she wanted for dinner and she said, "how about chili?" Sounds good to me on one of the last cool nights until the unending summer arrives! So, I got a wild hair and decided to make some homemade chili powder.

I bought three packages of whole dried chiles; one pasilla, one cascabel and one New Mexico.

The first step is to de-stem and de-seed the chiles. I found that this worked best with a pair of kitchen scissors. So, I commenced to stemin' and seedin', wearing gloves, of course. THESE PUPPIES WILL BURN YOUR SKIN, SO WEAR GLOVES WHENEVER HANDLING THEM!!! Below is a picture of the processed chile peppers with all the seeds and stems removed.



The next step was to roast them to bring out more of the flavor. I popped them in a 300 degree oven, on a half sheet pan for about five minutes.



The smell in the kitchen was amazing!!! SCRATCH HERE FOR THE SMELL

Next step? Grind 'em up into a fine powder. I thought that this job would be best handled by my trusty KitchenAid(TM) food processor. I use that appliance more than any other small appliance in the kitchen.

So I moved the roasted chiles from the pan to the processor and ground. And ground. And ground, ground , ground, ground, ground!!!



But it never became a fine powder. Arrrgh!! What to do? "Ah, the coffee/spice grinder should work," I said aloud, marveling at my brilliance!{SARCASM ALERT}.

I transferred the chunky chile concoction to the grinder and voila', chile powder. Smells yummy and tastes even better.

You'll notice that I've spelled it chile powder and not chili powder. Chile powder is ground chiles. Chili powder is ground chiles with other spices, like garlic, pepper, paprika, cumin and oregano added. I prefer to add these other spices myself. Just for fun though, I added about a teaspoon of garlic and a teaspoon of oregano.

So there you have it! Homemade chile powder.

Fresh homemade chili for some fresh ground chuck chili tonight. I'll post my chili recipe another time. It's yummy, so they tell me.

Edit 3-21-10 The chili that I made with this new spice mix was amazing. Although, I'm sure the homemade beef stock and freshly ground lean chuck didn't hurt either!!

Be well, eat well, love well, live long!