Here's California Heat, a spice blend collab between L.A. Times Food and Burlap & Barrel

Diptych of spice jar and prepared food using spice oil

By Betty HallockDeputy Food Editor

Oct. 15, 2023 3 AM PT

How do you capture California in a bottle? We set out to do exactly that with a spice blend that says as much about our Golden State and Los Angeles as it does about how we love to cook and eat.

L.A. Times Food collaborated with single-origin spice company Burlap & Barrel to create California Heat. Smoky, aromatic and citrusy, it’s our tribute to the heat and spice and bright flavors of L.A. The spice blend combines a mix of hot, sweet and smoky chile varieties from Mexico and Kashmir, Middle Eastern black lime, Asian lemongrass and peppercorns related to the tingly Sichuan kind. These are some of the same ingredients in many of the cuisines we are dedicated to exploring across the city and Southern California.

When the Food team was given the task of coming up with a spice blend, reporter Stephanie Breijo immediately thought of how much we love chili crisp, salsa and hot sauce. “Chili crisp and its variants are essentially ubiquitous in L.A. at this point,” she said. We’ve covered all sorts of crisps and hot sauces in great depth and detail here at L.A. Times Food: our favorite Chinese and Taiwanese jars of the crunchy-spicy stuff, salsa macha and more. This was just a starting point.

How we made California Heat

Chili crisps and hot sauces sparked the idea for a base of chile powder and flakes and crunchy aromatics like garlic and shallots. Plus, we knew we wanted to tap into other flavors of Mexican, Asian, Indian and Middle Eastern cooking. In the L.A. Times Test Kitchen, we started blending and tasting and tweaking.

We aimed for a citrusy, capsaicin-forward, complex spice blend that channeled the bright heat of Los Angeles.

A jar of California Heat spice mix next to a small dish of the spice mix

Once an original formula was created, the team at Burlap & Barrel contributed their suggestions. We tasted and adjusted and sent our feedback. Burlap & Barrel tweaked again, and the final blend is a true collaboration, a smoky, bright, aromatic blend that’s meant to celebrate some of our favorite flavors — and our devotion to all things spicy. L.A. Times Food art director Brandon Ly created the label design.

Where to buy it

California Heat is available online at burlapandbarrel.com.

What’s in California Heat

Burlap & Barrel sources single-origin spices directly from small-scale farms around the world. It just made sense to start with jalapeños, the most universally famous chile pepper, named after Xalapa, the capital city of Veracruz state in Mexico. The medium-hot red jalapeños featured in California Heat are the El Jefe variety grown by Fire Tongue Farms near Santa Cruz, Calif. They’re ripened in the summer heat until they turn red (rather than picked while green like many commercially available jalapeños). They’re sweet and fruity with a medium heat that lasts.

Fire Tongue Farms also dries and smokes jalapeños for the chipotle peppers used in California Heat. The chipotle peppers in this blend, along with the pimenton from Spain that’s dried over oak coals, are what give California Heat its smoky quality.

The Kashmiri chili powder is vibrant red, from an heirloom variety grown in Pampore, Kashmir, that’s a staple of Indian cooking — it was analogous to cayenne with its classic heat.

For texture and crunch, there are toasty caramelized onions and crispy slivers of garlic and shallot.

But what sets California Heat apart is its notes of citrus, from floral-bright lemongrass but especially from black lime. A staple in Persian cooking, these are grown, dried and ground at a small farm in Guatemala and have a distinctive savory-tart-musky flavor.

A bowl of white dip with a red chile oil swirl, on a plate with vegetables for dipping

What to do with it

We sprinkle this on or stir it into pretty much anything: fried or scrambled or deviled eggs, noodles, soups, stews, beans, grilled meats, tacos, toasts, fruit, tomato sauce, aioli, dips like hummus and baba ghanouj, marinades and salad dressings. Assistant Food editor Danielle Dorsey said she would add it to the batter for fried chicken. I make cottage cheese toast on rustic country bread, drizzle it with honey and sprinkle on California Heat; sometimes I add grated lemon zest.

Avocado toast and cottage cheese toast on a plate sprinkled with spice blend California Heat

In the style of chili crisp, use California Heat to make a quick chile oil. Add a spoonful to neutral oil (I like avocado oil; use a ratio of about 1:3 spice to oil) in a small saucepan over low heat, and let the spices warm just until the oil starts to bubble around the edges of the pot and the mixture is fragrant (it takes only about 30 seconds). Use California Heat chile oil to drizzle on steaks, steamed vegetables, roast chicken and pizza. Or make an easy dip by drizzling it over labneh or Greek yogurt.

It’s the zing we want to put on everything.