Homemade chili garlic sauce is terrific on EVERYTHING, and I highly recommend you pair it with my 15-minute Garlic Chili Noodles and Spicy Cucumber Salad!

To recreate the spice of hot paprika, the best substitute is another dried chilli, like ground cayenne, aleppo pepper powder, crushed red pepper flakes, red chilli powder, or even a dash of hot sauce. If your recipe calls for smokiness and sweetness, try chipotle chilli powder or ancho pepper powder. Chipotle powder has a smoky taste, but is hotter than paprika with a more earthy flavour, lending itself to barbecue sauces, rubs and chillis. Due to the difference in heat, use a ¼ teaspoon of chipotle powder for every teaspoon of paprika and adjust depending on your taste buds.

If you’re looking to replicate the flavour of sweet paprika add a pinch of sugar or some honey. Adding mild chilli powder or tomato powder works too. Bell peppers are another great substitute for sweet paprika and they come from the same Capsicum annuum family. Mild, sweet and aromatic, bell peppers give the same delicious taste and aroma, while adding a splash of colour too. When buying your bell peppers, make sure they’re nice and ripe.

One of the best substitutes for paprika is cayenne pepper. It’s a spicy chilli pepper, used to flavour many different cuisines and quite similar in colour. It’s a lot stronger and hotter than paprika, so if you’re using it as a substitute in your cooking, make sure you use a lesser quantity. If you have a lower tolerance to spicy food, you can add salt, cream, chopped tomatoes or more liquid (water or broth) to try and dial down the heat.

Like paprika, chilli powder packs a lot of flavour and is another worthy substitute. It’s also not as spicy as cayenne pepper, so you can use the same quantities.  The same goes for cajun spices. A combination of black and white pepper, plus other herbs and spices, it can work as a good substitute for smoked or sweet paprika, offering a similar flavour. But you won’t get the same beautiful red colour – more of an orange, warm hue.

You can also use cumin instead of paprika. But it’s a lot hotter, so go easy on the quantities. Like cajun spices, you won’t achieve the gorgeous red colour of paprika, as cumin has more of a yellowy-brown colouring, but you’ll still get an earthy flavour with hints of bitterness and sweetness.

Let's get into some history. Capsaicin was first extracted in 1816 by Christian Fridrich. Further work by John Clough Thresh led to its naming in 1876, but it wasn´t until 1898 that Karl Micko isolated the compound in pure crystalline form. A century later, in 1997, David Julius discovered and cloned the cellular receptor for capsaicin, and brought a new level of understanding on how capsaicin works. We´ll get more into this science in the second part of this blog.

Got dried paprika peppers and ready to grind them up? Let’s spice things up in the kitchen! Here’s a fun and easy way to grind your paprika:

Sweet paprika is the most common and available type, at least in North American supermarket spice aisles. If a recipe, or a spice bottle, simply says paprika without specifying which kind, it refers to the sweet kind. Sweet paprika has a very mild, sweet flavor and imparts a reddish hue to whatever it's sprinkled on or mixed into.

- Paprika oleoresin, on the other hand, is obtained through a solvent-based extraction process, where the essential oils, pigments, and flavors of paprika are extracted using a solvent such as hexane or ethyl acetate. This method results in a concentrated extract with a higher content of the active compounds, including the characteristic color and flavor of paprika.

Bell Pepper

In addition to its health benefits, hot chili sauce also adds a burst of flavor to dishes. The combination of chili peppers, garlic, and vinegar creates a tangy and spicy taste that can enhance the overall enjoyment of a meal. Many people find that adding hot chili sauce to their food not only increases the heat level but also adds depth and complexity to the flavor profile.