25 Best Red Chili Pepper Substitutes

What are Chili Peppers?

They're varieties of berry-fruit from Capsicum plants which originated in Bolivia before spreading all around the world.

Although they're a fruit, red chilli peppers, sometimes spelt as Chiles, or Chile Peppers, are usually treated like a vegetable or Asian spice when cooking.

What Makes the Perfect Replacement?

As with my post on substitutes for green onions, I feel the best way to know what makes an ideal substitute for something is to first understand why that ingredient is being used, which is usually to:

1. Add flavour & complexity (sweetness or smokiness)
2. Add heat
3. Add freshness to lift a dish (e.g. in a heavy coconut cream curry)
4. Add red color to a dish (this is common in Perankan food- both fresh red chilies and dried ones are added, for colour and flavour)

Fun fact: chili was originally added to hot chocolate in South America!

Characteristics

In addition, to learn what makes the best substitute for a specific chilli pepper, you need to know 3 things about it:

1. how spicy it is - using a replacement for Bird's eye chilli (a thin and pretty hot pepper) in place of jalapeño (and in the same quantities) will probably blow your socks off! 
2. how sweet it is 
3. how smoky it is

Obviously, most people would use the following types of chillies as replacements for each other as a 1st choice:

1. fresh peppers
2. dried peppers such as Tien Tsin chillies commonly used in Northern China (remove the seeds and internal membrane if you can't take the heat)
3. chili powder
4. chili pastes
5. red chili flakes
6. Gochugaru (Korean chilli flakes or powder, which are made from Korean chillies and different from the Italian chilli flakes)

Using Other Chilies

I will start with the alternative chillies for the most commonly used red chili peppers:

Bird's Eye Chili 

Also known as Thai peppers or chilli padi, this is used in many South East Asian recipes, such as these Vietnamese baked fish sauce wings, Thai Drunken Noodles, and Pinoy toyomansi dipping sauce. 

If you're not used to this type of chili, start with a small amount as the level of heat is high. The Scoville heat units range from 50,000 to 100,000. Much hotter than Jalapeno peppers but better than Scotch Bonnett.

Fun fact: chili padi is yellow when young and turns or red or green as it matures!

Alternative: Cayenne pepper or Serrano peppers

Jalapenos

Although widely perceived to be a mild pepper, jalapeño peppers actually range in spiciness from medium hot to hot. These green peppers are often used with nachos or on pizza.

Good Substitute: half the amount of Serrano chillies

Tip: If you often make pizza, I highly recommend this storage box for pizza. It's shaped like a pizza slice, so saves a lot of space in the fridge, and can store up to 5 slices (with a divider to prevent sticking.) No more faffing around with aluminium foil!

I also grow this in my Click & Grow kit!

Cayenne Pepper

These hot peppers usually come dried.

Red pepper flakes (usually made from cayenne peppers) or ground cayenne pepper powder would be an excellent substitute.

Substitute: Chile de Arbol or Guajillo

Habanero Pepper

A Mexican chilli that is spicy, smoky and sweet, and obviously common in Mexican cuisine.

Substitute: 2x the amount of Jalapeños 

Click here to learn more about more unusual chillies not on this list and here for substitutes for the less common chillies.

For Smokiness

To recreate the smoky flavor of chillies, you can try:

1. Smoked paprika powder
   • Note that there is a sweet paprika and a hot paprika powder, so choose according to the spice level of the chilli you're replacing. (You might even want to mix both types of paprika to DIY a better alternative.)
2. Smoked garlic
3. Smoked salt
4. Bell peppers mixed with a bit of liquid smoke
   • Some people are not fans of using liquid smoke though.

For Cutting through Heavy Flavors

When you want to cut through the fat and lift a dish, like how we add pickled green chili peppers to wanton mee in Singapore & Malaysia, you can use:

1. Lemon juice
2. Lime juice (added to sambal mayo, for instance, to prevent the mayo from weighing down your taste buds)
3. Vinegar (for example, a pinch helps to make a heavy dish such as Chinese braised pork ribs much more delectable)
4. Herbs such as lemongrass, curry leaves, mint and kaffir lime leaves
5. Tons of black pepper (think Cacio e Pepe)

For Spiciness

Lastly, if you're trying to add heat for spicy food, you could look at:

1. Homemade Chili Flakes
2. Chili Powder
3. Tabasco sauce
4. Sriracha
5. Sambal Oelek
6. Maggi chilli sauce
7. Gochujang Paste
8. LaoGanMa
9. Hot Sauce
10. & the other chili sauces on the market!

For Color

You can add another red colored condiment, such as:

1. Tomato paste
2. Beetroot Powder
3. Harissa (this will definitely change the flavor, as will Korean Fermented Chili Paste/ Gochujang.)
4. Gochujang Paste

Expert Tips

Tip #1: Never touch your eyes after handling a chili pepper or it will sting like mad! (Many pepper sprays actually use chillies in them so you can imagine how hot they get.)

Tip #2: The internal membrane is the hottest part, so remember to remove it (and the seeds) before using.

Tip #3: If you've eaten a chili that is too spicy for you, drink some milk (or a dairy product like yogurt) and it'll make you feel better, as capsaicin is soluble in fat and alcohol. (The heat is determined by the amount of capsaicin in the chilli: the more it has, the hottest peppers have rank the highest on the Scoville scale.)