Building chili powder

Commercial chili powder dates to the 1890s. Dave DeWitt and Nancy Gerlach report two claims to its invention: DeWitt Clinton Pendery of Fort Worth, who sold a powder called Chiltomaline to cafes and hotels in the early 1890s, and William Gebhardt of New Braunfels, credited by other sources with the first packaged chili powder in 1894. Gebhardt imported Mexican anchos so that he could serve chili year-round and ground them with cumin, oregano and black pepper. By 1899 he held a trademark for Eagle Chili Powder.

John Raven distinguished chili powder, a blend of ground chile with cumin, garlic, oregano and other spices chosen by the maker, from pure chile powder. Serious cooks, he wrote, seek out the pure powder to control the other seasonings, buy a good batch in quantity and freeze it, since any brand varies from batch to batch with growing conditions. He also described double grinding, running all the spices through a grinder a second time so that they release flavor faster and more completely, and toasting whole cumin seed before grinding it.

A home blend can be made from pods. Patricia Mitchell’s method for Texas Cooking stems and seeds ancho, New Mexico and árbol or cayenne chiles, flattens them on a baking sheet in a 300°F oven and pulls each piece as it toasts, the small ones first. The crisp pieces are pulsed to powder in a blender with toasted, ground cumin seed, garlic powder and oregano. She advises pliable pods and warns against ristra chiles, which she says dry out and lose flavor; NMSU Guide E-327, by contrast, permits sauce from ristra pods that have not been sprayed. Competition cooks today more often buy than build. Tom Dozier’s 2018 CASI recipe divides three named commercial powders, Mexene and two Pendery’s blends, between its two dumps.