Thai Chili Flakes (Prik Bon)

Super spicy, extra flavorful chili flakes made from Thai chili peppers. Use prik bon as a fire-y topping to all your favorite foods.

Thai Chili Powder

Thai chili flakes, or prik bon (พริกป่น), are a popular table side condiment in Thai cuisine.

It’s red hot, extra spicy, and adds a kick to whatever you sprinkle it on – salads, dipping sauces, larb, fried rice… I especially love it on noodles!

You’ll usually find it in a group – some chili flakes, prik nam pla, vinegar, sugar – and it allows everyone to slightly tweak their food to their own palate.

Thai chili powder is super spicy.

If you love heat, you have to make this!

Store bought chili flakes won’t compare in color, flavor or taste.

Thai Chili Flakes Recipe Video

How to Make Homemade Thai Chili Flakes

Spices at the grocery store are often a muted, flavorless shell.

They can be years old, or made from low quality peppers, so you won’t get the same amount of flavor as you would making homemade chili powder with fresh ingredients.

Also, chili manufacturers often cut corners and add fillers like dry red leaves to plump up the volume and cut costs. If you make your own, you’ll be blown away by the difference!

Luckily, it’s very simple to make.

extra spicy Thai dragon chilies I grew inside my apartment

Thai Chilies

There are lots of varieties of Thai chili peppers. For this condiment, you want the extra spicy small peppers.

The best place to get Thai birds eye chilies is at Asian grocery stores. If you don’t have one local to you, Weee is a great online shop that I frequently use.

I’ve occasionally found fresh Thai birds eye chilies at Whole Foods or you can buy dried packages on Amazon.

In the dried pepper section, you’ll often see two types of dry Thai peppers, distinguishable by size. The larger Thai chilies don’t have much heat and are used more for color, like in curry paste.

You want the small, 2″-3″ chili peppers.

these Thai pepper plants produce hundreds of chilies per plant, which is good because you need a lot of chilies to make chili powder!

Growing Your Own Thai Chilies

I grew my own Thai chilies (this extra hot Dragon chili variety) in my indoor gardens.

Thai chilies are some of the easiest hot peppers to grow indoors, so I always recommend them if you like Thai food.

The plants are relatively compact, so a medium size indoor garden like this one works well.

Each pepper plant can produce 300+ peppers in a very compact space, so you quickly end up with hundreds of spicy chilies that are perfect for turning into chili flakes.

I also like to use the fresh Thai chilies to make pad kra pao!

Read more: How to Grow Thai Chili Peppers Indoors

leaving my Thai chilies to air dry for a couple weeks. you can skip this by just buying dry Thai chilies

Drying Thai Peppers

If you buy fresh birds eye chilies at the grocery store, or grow your own, you’ll need to first dry them in order to make chili powder.

A dehydrator is useful for speeding up the process.

It uses very low heat to thoroughly dry out fresh vegetables while retaining their color and moisture.

Using an oven won’t get the same result – even the lowest heat setting on most ovens will be too high to properly dehydrate.

At some point, I’d love to get a dehydrator but for now I don’t have the space in my tiny NYC kitchen!

So I use the cheap and easy method of air drying all my peppers.

It takes much longer, but still gets the job done.

To air dry your Thai peppers, place them on a tray or baking sheet in a single layer and leave them to slowly dry out.

Placing them in a sunny spot or on a windowsill helps.

making your own chili powder is worth it – the color, flavor and spice level will be 10x better than store bought!

Roasting Thai Chili Peppers

Thai chilies are extremely spicy so you may want to wear a face mask and gloves.

I find that just touching dry Thai dragon peppers gives a burning tingly sensation to my hands.

To get extra flavor out of your Thai chili powder, you can roast the chilies in a pan on low heat, without oil.

The slow roasting process should take about 5 to 7 minutes. Stir to prevent burning, and stop when the chilies have darkened in color.

Let them cool completely before moving on to the next step.

Roasting the Thai peppers helps to remove any lingering moisture and therefore extending the shelf life of your chili powder.

But it also brings out a lot of heat into the air, which can makes your eyes water, your throat choke and just be a little much – especially in a small kitchen with poor ventilation.

I usually skip this step and wait a couple weeks longer to air dry my chilies.

you can grind your Thai chilies into fine powder or coarse flakes – I personally like it super fine!

Grinding Dry Thai Peppers

Place all the dry chilies in a blender or food processor and grind!

You can pulverize them into a fine powder or coarsely pulse for larger chili flakes.

I tend to like a very fine powder consistency.

You’ll need a lot of chili peppers to make chili powder. My entire blender of Thai chilies didn’t even fill my glass jar once ground.

Store the Thai chili powder in an airtight container and keep it in your spice drawer.

Thai chili flakes will stay good for up to a year but lose their flavor and color as they age.

Sprinkle them on fried rice, stir frys or noodle dishes.. or use some of the chili powder to make spicy chili oil!

Read more: Extra Spicy Thai Chili Oil

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