Tl;dr.

Is there a "standard" definition of chilli powder? What am I buying when I buy chilli powder? What type of chillies does it contain?

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Long version.

So I might be stupid but I just realised today at the age of 34 that I have absolutely no idea what chilli powder is. I've always liked spicy food, from as far back as I can remember chilli con carne was my favourite food, my mum and my dad each had their own variations on the dish and I absolutely loved both (my dad was the better chef but there was so much love in the way mum would make hers). As a teenager I became intimately familiar with the various "stir-in" versions that I would never touch now: Uncle Ben's of course, Old El Paso, and even Homepride.

By the time I left home 15 years ago chilli con carne was the only "proper" dish I knew how to cook. My basic recipe has always been some variation of onion, garlic and bell peppers plus a mix of a small amount of cayenne and paprika as well as a heap of cumin and an even bigger heap of chilli powder. I've learned to cook a few other things that aren't chilli con carne in the meantime but almost always these dishes will involve some or all of the ingredients I've just mentioned. I've also experimented with my "core" con carne recipe, trying all sorts of additional peppers: jalapenos, chipotle etc. I usually cook it twice a week, once the standard recipe I have honed for almost two decades and once a "jazz version" where I play around with it.

Chilli powder is a staple essential in my kitchen; I add it to omelettes and chicken marinades, when I roast vegetables I throw in a pinch or two, I use it to season oven chips. There are three chilli powders I generally fall back on: the Morrisons version, the Schwartz version and a big bag I get from my local Indian market. All are nice and while I don't quite use them interchangeably I can use one in place of another in an emergency as long as I remember to add a bit more/less water.

Until literally today I assumed there was a basic "standard" chilli that chilli powder is made of. I googled it this morning and it turns out there are a lot of conflicting definitions. I looked at my own bags/jars and some don't have ingredients listed at all while others just say "chillies". What does that even mean? Do they just use random chillies or is there some top secret recipe that is the equivalent of the big mac sauce/kfc skin recipe?

I asked a cousin of mine who taught me a lot about cooking and he told me "they just find the right mix" but how? He later admitted that he hadn't ever really thought about it before. I also asked an ex whose family are of Caribbean origin and she says she doesn't know either and had also never thought about it. I very much doubt my con carne would taste the same if I just replaced "chilli powder" with Scotch Bennett powder. So what the hell is chilli powder?