Hi Turtle!
Many or most recipes that I see
include some cumin (and I've read elsewhere that cumin is an ingredient in most chili powders). I see 1/12th up to 1/8th of the powder being cumin. However, I don't add cumin as an ingredient to my "chili powder mixes". However, I do doctor up some store-bought mixes, so I get some cumin that way.
Some of these "chili powder" recipes include powdered garlic and oregano. I never do that. I have a separate jars of granulated garlic and minced garlic. I shovel from those into each dish "to taste". Powdered hot chili peppers are a separate matter!
(These are not recommendations, just sample recipes so you can gauge how much cumin to try.)
http://www.food.com/library/cu...
http://www.thekitchn.com/from-...
http://www.foodnetwork.com/rec...
I store purchased whole chili peppers in an organza bag. Then I chopp them into chunks using a pair of tin snips, thinking they might dry a little more. The chunks are much easier to chop uniformly than whole peppers are. Plus, I remove the stems at this stage.
Then I chop them pretty fine in a coffee bean "grinder". Not really a
grinder, since it has sharp blades like a food processor. For my batch size, the small coffee "grinder" was a better fit than a big blender.
The
dry dust blows around very easily, and it turned my kitchen into a bio-hazard zone for a week!
After the blades stop spinning, tap all the powder into one corner, and then
let the dust settle for 30 seconds before opening it up!
I used old napkins to wipe up the visible dust, but I made the mistake of leaving one of those "hot zone" napkins un-thrown-away. Using it to wipe my fingers the next day was a BIG mistake, because then I touched my face.
I ground each pepper type separately, then mixed them several different ways.
I like some peppers that are not very spicy themselves, as a base for different mixes.
- New Mexico from different sources
- Guajillo
- Chili Negro
- fruit stand "dried California peppers", probably Anaheim, very mild
- commercial chili powders with some flavor but little heat
I can't grow peppers myself, but I buy dried peppers like:
Arbol
Thai
Cayenne (powder)
Now I mostly use my "Mild Mix", and a doctored version of Fred Meyer's "Fiesta" chili powder with some heat added as a "spice base". Then I add a little of something hot, or a lot of some mild pepper with a strong flavor.
For "compounding" my mixes, and for adding them to dishes, I rely heavily on a set of mini-measuring spoons that include 1/32 tsp, 1/16 tsp and 1/8 tsp.
I usually test and refine my mixes using a cup of beef or chicken bullion. First I steep it with something I already mixed, then add a tiny amount of whatever I'm considering adding. The flavor takes a while to extract itself. That's when I wish I had 1/64th tsp or 1/100 tsp measuring spoons!
P.S. For everything except the hottest peppers, I was happy with small flakes or "granulated" size. But I like the hottest peppers to be real fine powder so they can mix uniformly even if I don't include a lot of them.
