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Recipes with Crushed Red Pepper Flakes

Spice up your dinner with these delicious recipes with crushed red pepper flakes! From shrimp seasoning to maple orange chicken wings, here you'll find recipes full of heat and flavor.

What are crushed red pepper flakes?

Crushed red pepper flakes (also called simply red pepper flakes or crushed red pepper) are dried and crushed, fully ripened (i.e.red) chili peppers. Which chili peppers, you ask? Usually it's a combination of different types, including jalapeño, Fresno and cayenne. Often you'll even find bell peppers in the mix!

Because all the heat-containing seeds and ribs of the peppers are left in, crushed red pepper flakes are quite spicy and provide a great way to add heat to a dish.

Red pepper flakes vs. chili flakes:

The main difference between red pepper flakes and chili flakes is that red pepper flakes are made from a combination of different peppers while chili flakes are usually made from a single type of pepper. (Which single type of pepper will vary from product to product.)

Chili flakes are also usually deseeded while crushed red pepper flakes contain all the peppers' seeds.

How to use crushed red pepper flakes:

I love to add the flakes to sauces, like in this honey sesame tofu and these sweet and spicy shrimp. Because red pepper flakes are dried, they are also great for seasonings and dry rubs, like the jerk seasoning for this jerk shrimp pasta dish or this salmon dry rub.