What is Crushed Red Pepper Flakes?

Also known Crushed Red Chilli Pepper, Red chilli flakes, Red Pepper flakes,

Crushed red pepper flakes is simply dried and crushed red hot pepper. The whole dried pepper, including seeds, and ribs is crushed.

Red pepper flakes are mostly produced from  cayenne pepper, a cultivated variety of the species, Capsicum annuum L.

Cayenne pepper has a scoville scale of (30,000-50,000) compared to Jalapeño (2,500-10,000), Banana Pepper (0-500) and Bell Pepper (0).

Several peppers including bell pepper, jalapeño, serrano and paprika, just to mention a few, also belong to the species Capsicum annuum L.

Culinary Use of Red Pepper Flakes

Red pepper flakes are commonly used as a seasoning in cooking or as an ingredient in spice rubs or spice mixes.

They are also popularly be used in pepper shakers (pepper pots), in restaurants, especially American pizza parlours and Italian Stye Restaurants.

In the food manufacturing industry, they’re used in sausages, pickling, sauces and prepared, ready to eat foods or frozen pizzas.

Whole and Crushed Cayenne Pepper

Cayenne Pepper Photo Courtesy of : André Karwath aka Aka [Creative Commons BY-SA 2.5)

Crushed Red Chilli Pepper myfavouritepastime.com

What is the Scoville Scale?

The amount of heat in hot pepper is measured by the Scoville scale, which measures the pungency (spicy heat) of chilli peppers, recorded in Scoville heat units. The units range from 0 (Bell pepper); 100-900 (Paprika, Pimento); 3,500-10,000 (Chipotle, Jalapeño); 30,000-50,000 (Cayenne, Tabasco), 100,000-350,000 (Habanero, Scotch bonnet) to 2,000,200 (Carolina Reaper).

myfavouritepastime.com