Deggi Mirch

Details

Deggi Mirch is a colour chilli rather than a heat chilli: it turns a dish deep red without making it hot. Ours is ground from whole Byadgi-type pods from north Karnataka, destalked and cleaned first, and every lot is measured for colour value before it is packed. Red chilli powder is one of the most adulterated things in an Indian kitchen, because colour is the only thing a shopper judges it by. The dyes used to fake that colour are Sudan red and rhodamine B, both non-permitted coal-tar colours, and neither is food. The other trick is weight: brick powder, sawdust, sand and starch cost almost nothing and none of them can be seen once the powder is red.

• No Sudan dyes, no rhodamine B, no added colour of any kind
• No brick powder, no sawdust, no sand, no starch bulking
• No spent chilli, the pods have not been stripped for oleoresin and re-ground
• No stalk ground in for weight, and seed only in its natural proportion
• ASTA colour value 100 minimum, tested per lot, so the red is measured rather than claimed
• No ethylene oxide fumigation
• The red is a deep brick red, not the fluorescent scarlet of a dyed powder, and it dulls a little over months because nothing is holding it there
• It is mild. If you want heat, this is the wrong chilli for it.