Mondo Knows Facts
Dried chillies keep most of their heat
Capsaicin resists drying, so flakes and powder stay pungent for months Capsaicin is a stable molecule that does not evaporate with water, so a dried chilli retains most of its pungency. Drying changes the flavour instead, building raisin and tobacco notes as sugars concentrate. Paprika and ancho flakes are therefore milder and sweeter than the raw pods would suggest. It sits in Mondo's food collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: chilli, drying, capsaicin
Dried chillies keep most of their heat: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Capsaicin resists drying, so flakes and powder stay pungent for months. The figure is taken from American Chemical Society, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a food fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Food shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.