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condiments What kind of mill/grinder for pepper flakes?

Grass Snake

Grass Snake

I've seen various methods for making pepper flakes, but I was curious as to how it's made on a commercial scale. After a little research I found 2 mills that are commonly used, the hammer mill and one that looks exactly like a meat grinder but bigger. I've never heard or seen anyone using a standard home meat grinder for making flakes, so it got me thinking. I asked my buddy with an electric meat grinder to run some dried Chiles through it to see what happens. He used Guajillo Chiles for the test run and I'm quite impressed with the results. Maybe some of you have figured this out already but let's discuss the best ways to make high-quality flakes on a small or large scale.

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What kind if quantity are you looking to run and what start to finish consistency are you looking for?

Whole dried to pizza chile flakes?
Whole dried to fine powder?


The above baggie looks a little coarser than pizza chiles. Is that what you are looking for?
 
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salsalady said:
What kind if quantity are you looking to run and what start to finish consistency are you looking for?

Whole dried to pizza chile flakes?
Whole dried to fine powder?


The above baggie looks a little coarser than pizza chiles. Is that what you are looking for?
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Yes I like a bigger flake but I’d also I’d like it to be able to go through a shaker dispenser.
 
The Hot Pepper said:
From a meat grinder?
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I was asking if he was wanting to go from whole dried to what size....flake or powder.

If he wanted powder i would suggest BlendTec.
 
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Fine powder is not possible from a meat grinder.
 
Are you sprinkling the flakes on food?
 

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These have the same size orifices, there are others out there with larger orifices.
 
Sprinkling on food as opposed to in food like soup where the flakes get rehydrated. Personally, i dont like big dry flakes, but that is just me. Make what you like. Looks like the meat grinder does the job.


Be aware that after using the machine for peppers, everything run thru the machine after that will probably have a spicy tinge to it. :lol:
 
I think salsalady is thinking of those whole dried peppers you buy in the bag.
 
If you can reduce the amount of seeds, it would be much better. Just look at that bag. Looks like a bag of seeds lol. There was this one flake called Devil Dust, they must have filtered out all the seeds, it was just this killer flake. They went out of business but I still have a bottle.
 
The Hot Pepper said:
If you can reduce the amount of seeds, it would be much better. Just look at that bag. Looks like a bag of seeds lol. There was this one flake called Devil Dust, they must have filtered out all the seeds, it was just this killer flake. They went out of business but I still have a bottle.
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I agree less seeds would be nice. There’s a crap load of seeds in those big whole dried chiles but it’s easy to rip off top and shake most of the seeds out. That’s the beauty of making your own flakes, you can control how seedy it will be.
 
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