What Is Calabrian Chili Oil?

Search for chili oil in America and you will mostly find two things. Chinese chili crisp, which is wonderful and which lives in my own fridge, and a shelf of hot sauces that are mostly vinegar and heat. Calabrian chili oil is a different thing entirely, and it comes out of a different tradition.

Here is what it actually is, where it comes from, and what to do with it.

Calabria, and the pepper it is named after

Calabria is the toe of the Italian boot. Hot, dry, mountainous, and poorer than the north. The food that comes out of it reflects all of that. Preserved things, cured things, anything built to survive a long summer without refrigeration.

The peperoncino grows there in quantity. It arrived in Italy after Columbus, along with tomatoes and everything else that now looks like it has always been Italian, and Calabria took to it harder than anywhere else in the country. There is a festival for it in Diamante every September. People wear it around their necks, dried and strung, the way other regions hang garlic.

A Calabrian chili is small, red, and moderately hot. It is not a chili grown to win a heat competition. It is grown to taste like something.

What it tastes like

Fruity first, then the heat. That order is the thing that separates peperoncino from most chilies on a supermarket shelf. There is a sweetness and an almost sun dried tomato quality to it before the burn arrives, and the burn itself is clean. It does not sit on your tongue for ten minutes afterward.

On the Scoville scale it lands somewhere between a jalapeno and a cayenne. Warm rather than punishing. You can pour it on your food and still taste the food, which is the entire point of a drizzling oil.

It is not chili crisp, and it is not hot honey

Worth being clear about this, because all three end up in roughly the same part of your table.

Chili crisp is Chinese, it is textural, and the fried garlic and shallot in it are doing as much work as the chili. You spoon it. It is loud and crunchy and brilliant on noodles and dumplings.

Hot honey is sweet first. It is a condiment built on contrast, and it works best against salt and fat, which is how it ended up on pizza and fried chicken.

Calabrian chili oil is an olive oil first. The chili is riding along on something that already tastes green and peppery on its own. You pour it rather than spoon it, and it is doing a quieter job. It is not the loudest thing on the plate. It is the thing that makes the plate taste finished.

How to use it

The rule in my house is to use it twice. Once to cook with, once after the food is plated. The second pour is the one most people skip, and it is the one that matters, because on the plate the oil is not a cooking medium any more. It is an ingredient, and it is the last thing that hits your tongue.

Pizza

The obvious one, and it is obvious for a reason. After it comes out of the oven, not before.

Eggs

Fried, crispy edges, runny yolk. Over the top with flaky salt. Four seconds, and it changes breakfast.

Pasta, especially aglio e olio

A Calabrian would use it in the pan. I do both. In the pan for the base, then again over the bowl.

Beans and soup

White beans, lentils, minestrone, anything brothy. A pour on top of the bowl does more than any amount of stirring it through.

Roasted vegetables

Broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes. Straight out of the oven, while they are still hot enough to take it on.

Burrata, mozzarella, ricotta

Soft cheese and chili oil is one of those combinations that feels like a restaurant trick and takes ten seconds.

What to look for when you buy it

Two questions, and the label should answer both.

What is the olive oil underneath? A chili oil is mostly olive oil. If the oil is tired, the chili is decorating something that already went quiet. Look for where the olives were grown, harvested and milled, and look for a harvest date rather than only a best before date.

What kind of chili? Calabrian and peperoncino are specific words. Generic chili oil is a very broad category, and it is worth knowing which one you are holding.

Ours is Spicy Virgin. Calabrian peperoncino, in olive oil grown, harvested and milled in Italy, one harvest, in a 250ml tin that is meant to live on the table rather than in the cupboard.

Start with eggs tomorrow morning. It is the cheapest possible test of whether any of this is true, and it takes an extra three seconds.

Luca