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Red Pepper Flakes substitute

Best substitute

Cayenne pepper (ground)

Use half as much: ½ teaspoon cayenne for 1 teaspoon of flakes

Best for pasta sauces

Different texture

Use half as much cayenne pepper as the recipe asks of flakes, so half a teaspoon of cayenne for a teaspoon of flakes. Gochugaru works too at about one and a half times the amount, and Aleppo pepper at double, both of which are milder and fruitier. What flakes are actually doing in a dish is delivering dry heat in little bursts, plus a faint fruity, slightly bitter dried-chilli flavour and visible red flecks, and crucially they add no moisture and no acid. That is why a squirt of hot sauce is not an even trade: it brings vinegar and water with it, which is fine in a soup and ruins a dry rub or a spice-crusted steak.

Other red pepper flakes substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

Substitutes for Red Pepper Flakes with ratios

  1. 2Gochugaru (Korean chilli flakes)

    Different taste

    Use about 1.5 to 2 times as much

    Sun-dried Korean chillies, deseeded and ground coarse, brilliant red and much milder than cayenne.

    What changes
    Best for
    stir-fries, noodle dishes, soups and stews, roasted vegetables, eggs

    Excellent all-round swap and the best one if you want colour as well as heat, because gochugaru is a far brighter red. What changes: it is noticeably milder, distinctly fruitier and faintly sweet with a whisper of smoke, so a bowl of pasta made with it tastes rounder and less sharp. That is lovely in a savoury braise and wrong on pizza, where you want the sudden jolt. Because it is milder you need more, and because you need more, the flavour becomes noticeable rather than background.

  2. 3Aleppo pepper

    Different taste

    Use about twice as much

    Coarsely ground Syrian and Turkish chilli, slightly oily, deep brick red and only gently hot.

    What changes
    Best for
    finishing dishes at the table, roast vegetables, hummus and labneh, grilled meat, flatbreads

    The most flavourful substitute and the one that makes food taste better rather than just hotter. What changes: Aleppo is mild, raisiny and faintly sour, almost like sun-dried tomato, so it adds a fruity depth that plain flakes do not have. A pasta arrabbiata made with it is more interesting but much less fiery, so if the heat itself was the point, this will disappoint. It is a superb finishing sprinkle where flakes were being used purely as a garnish.

  3. 4Whole dried chillies, crushed yourself

    Close match

    Use the same amount by volume once crushed

    Any dried red chilli such as arbol, Kashmiri or generic dried red chilli, snapped up in your fingers or pulsed briefly.

    What changes
    Best for
    pizza and pasta, chilli oil, stir-fries, any use where the flake texture matters

    This is not really a substitute, it is the same product made ten seconds earlier, and it is the only option that reproduces the burst-of-heat texture exactly. Snap the pods into a bowl with your fingers, including the seeds, or pulse them a couple of times in a spice grinder. What varies is heat: arbol is hotter than average flakes, Kashmiri and generic supermarket dried chillies are usually milder, so crush a little, taste a fragment, then commit.

  4. 5Fresh red chilli, finely chopped

    Taste and texture differ

    Use About 1 small fresh chilli, or ½ teaspoon minced, for every ½ teaspoon of flakes

    A fresh serrano, red jalapeno, Fresno or bird's eye, seeded to taste and chopped small.

    What changes
    Best for
    sautes and stir-fries, sauces cooked from scratch, curries, salsas

    Works well when the chilli goes into the pan early with oil and aromatics. What changes: fresh chilli is grassy, bright and juicy rather than dry and slightly bitter, so the dish tastes livelier and less deep, and it brings water with it. That extra moisture is invisible in a tomato sauce and a real problem in a dry rub, a spice blend or anything you are trying to crisp. Never use it as a finishing sprinkle in place of flakes, because raw chunks of fresh chilli on top of a pizza are a completely different eating experience.

  5. 6Hot sauce

    Taste and texture differ

    Use About 1 teaspoon of hot sauce for every ¼ teaspoon of flakes

    Any thin vinegar-based hot sauce such as a Louisiana-style cayenne sauce, used only where liquid is acceptable.

    What changes
    Best for
    soups and stews, braises, chilli, marinades, salad dressings

    Genuinely useful in wet dishes and genuinely bad in dry ones, so this belongs at the bottom of the list. What changes: hot sauce is mostly vinegar, water and salt, so it adds sourness and saltiness alongside the heat and dilutes whatever you put it in. A pot of chilli absorbs that happily. A dry rub turns to paste, a spice-crusted piece of fish will not form a crust, and popcorn goes soggy. If you are using it, pull back any other vinegar in the recipe and taste for salt.

  6. 7American chili powder blend

    Taste and texture differ

    Use Use about 3 times as much, or 1 tablespoon for every teaspoon of flakes

    The pre-mixed Tex-Mex blend of mild ground chilli with cumin, oregano, garlic and salt.

    What changes
    Best for
    chilli con carne, tacos, bean dishes, Mexican-style stews

    The least reliable swap, because it is mostly not chilli. What changes: you are adding cumin, oregano and garlic along with the heat, which is delicious in a pot of chilli and completely wrong in an Italian pasta or on a pizza, where the dish will suddenly taste faintly of tacos. It is also much milder, so you need roughly three times the volume, by which point the extra spices are unmistakable. Note that British and Indian shops sell chilli powder that is pure ground chilli with no blend at all, and that version behaves like cayenne, so use half a teaspoon rather than a tablespoon.

What is Red Pepper Flakes?

Red Pepper Flakes is the coarse shaker chilli you find on a pizzeria table, also sold as crushed red pepper or chilli flakes, made of dried red cayenne-type chillies broken into rough pieces with the seeds left in, and its job in a dish is dry heat in scattered bursts plus visible red flecks, with no moisture and no acid added.

Cooking tips

  • Bloom the flakes. Warming them in oil over low heat for thirty seconds before anything else goes in the pan pulls the flavour out of the dried skins and spreads the heat evenly through the dish. This is the single biggest difference between a pasta that tastes spicy and one that tastes of chilli, and it applies just as much to whichever substitute you use. Keep the heat gentle, because burnt chilli turns acrid in seconds.
  • Heat varies wildly by brand and by jar, and there is no way to know without tasting. Two jars both labelled crushed red pepper can differ by several times in strength, because they are blends of whatever chillies were available. Put a single flake on your tongue before you measure, and always start with half of what a recipe says if you are opening a new jar.
  • Most of the burn does not come from the seeds, despite what everyone repeats. Capsaicin is concentrated in the pale pithy membrane inside the pod that the seeds cling to, and that membrane is broken up and included in the flakes along with the seeds. This is why picking seeds out of your flakes accomplishes very little and why deseeded chillies like gochugaru are so much milder.
  • Old flakes are weak flakes. Ground and crushed chilli loses potency after about a year, fading in both colour and heat, so if your jar has gone brownish and smells of dust you will need noticeably more than a recipe suggests. Store it in a sealed jar away from the hob and out of the light, and if you use a lot, buy small quantities more often.
  • Timing controls the shape of the heat. Add flakes at the start of cooking and the heat becomes an even background warmth throughout the dish. Sprinkle them on at the table and you get bright, uneven flashes of heat and a bit of crunch. If a recipe seems oddly insistent about when the chilli goes in, that is why.

Frequently asked questions

Are red pepper flakes and crushed red pepper the same thing?

Yes. Crushed red pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, red pepper flakes and pizza pepper all refer to the same product, and jars are labelled differently by brand and country. In Britain, Australia and much of Europe the same thing is sold as chilli flakes or dried chilli flakes. The only real distinction worth knowing is that flakes labelled with a specific chilli, such as gochugaru or Aleppo, are not generic and behave differently.

Can I just leave them out?

Almost always yes, and nothing will go wrong structurally, because chilli flakes contribute only flavour and heat. A pasta arrabbiata without them is just a plain tomato pasta, which is perfectly nice, and a pizza without them is a pizza. The one thing to keep in mind is that heat also makes other flavours seem sharper and less flat, so if you leave the chilli out of a simple dish, a squeeze of lemon or an extra pinch of salt often fills the gap better than nothing at all. Any recipe where the whole point is the heat, like arrabbiata or a spicy stir-fry, will taste noticeably tame.

How much cayenne pepper equals a teaspoon of red pepper flakes?

Half a teaspoon of cayenne, then taste. Cayenne is finely ground, so it disperses fully and delivers all of its heat rather than releasing it slowly from coarse pieces, which makes the same weight feel considerably hotter. If the dish is dry, like a rub, you may want to add a pinch of paprika alongside to make up the lost bulk and red colour without adding more heat.

How hot are red pepper flakes?

Generic supermarket flakes usually land somewhere in the range of a moderately hot chilli, well above a jalapeno and well below a habanero, but the honest answer is that it is unpredictable because it is a blend. Practical advice matters more than numbers: taste one flake, treat the first quarter teaspoon as an experiment, and remember that heat builds in a simmering dish over time, so something that tastes mild after two minutes may be noticeably hot after twenty.

Can I use gochugaru or Aleppo pepper instead on pizza?

You can, but they are doing a different job. Both are much milder and fruitier, so sprinkled on a slice of pizza they read as a pleasant warm seasoning rather than the sharp jolt of heat most people are after. If the shaker on the table is the point, crushing a couple of dried arbol chillies gets you far closer than either. If you are cooking a stew or roasting vegetables, gochugaru and Aleppo are arguably the better ingredient.

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