Redbloom Chili Crisp Comparison

This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you buy through them — at no extra cost to you. My scores are never influenced by this.

Redbloom Chili Crisp Comparison: Two Jars, One Formula

This Redbloom chili crisp comparison covers both varieties from Red Bloom Health — a Venice, California brand making gut-healthy chili crisp with avocado oil, no seed oils, and a low-FODMAP ingredient approach. Aroma is the purple label. Umami is the yellow. Both cost $14.99 for 6.35 ounces, and both ship with something I haven’t seen from any other brand: two separate ingredient labels on the same jar — one for the base, one for the oil infusion.

Here’s the thing that makes this comparison unusual: both jars have identical ingredient lists. Same base. Same oil infusion. Same everything on paper. I expected subtle differences. What I got was one jar that works and one that doesn’t.

Comparison Table

Tiers reflect in-context comparison performance. Individual review tiers may differ.

What They Share

Almost everything. These two jars are closer in DNA than any same-brand pair I’ve tested. Both use the same organic avocado oil and MCT oil base. Both have the same chili flake and seed grind. Both list the same eight-ingredient oil infusion — habanero, Sichuan peppercorn, ginger, shallots, garlic, star anise, cinnamon bark, black cardamom. Same settlement ratio at about 70% solids. Both stir up nicely. Both smell similar — that warm, layered, spice-cabinet aroma from the infused oil hits immediately on open.

The dual-ingredient label is shared too, and it’s the best thing either jar does on the packaging front. Base ingredients on one panel, infused-into-the-oil ingredients on a separate panel. Every brand should do this. It tells you exactly which flavors are in the oil and which are in the bits, and it makes evaluating the oil quality much easier.

What else they share: no crunch. At all. In either jar. But I’ll get to that.

The Oil — Where Both Jars Succeed

The infused avocado oil is the best thing about both products, and it’s the same oil in both jars. Taste it alone and you get ginger, star anise, Sichuan peppercorn warmth, a thread of cinnamon, and habanero heat underneath — all layered and distinct. The avocado oil base is clean, not greasy, and carries the infused aromatics in a way that cheaper oils just can’t. It’s almost an oil play by itself.

I love and appreciate what they’re doing here. The oil is super good. If Redbloom sold this as a standalone infused chili oil — no bits, no “crisp” claims — I’d be genuinely interested. The flavor work they’ve done through infusion is better than what most chili crisps achieve with their entire jar.

The Bits — Where Both Jars Fail

Neither jar has crunch. The solids in both are chili seeds and dried chili flakes — uniform, chewy, no snap. No fried garlic chips, no shallot crisps, no toasted seeds with structure. Fork a mouthful of bits from either jar and you’re chewing, not crunching. This is the tradeoff of the gut-health approach: the ingredients that usually deliver crunch in chili crisp are the same ones that can irritate — fried garlic, fried shallots — so they got infused into the oil instead.

The result: both jars are less than the sum of their parts. The oil alone is excellent. The bits alone add heat and salt but not much else. Mix them together and the bits don’t enhance the oil — they might actually flatten it. That’s the central problem, and both varieties share it equally.

Aroma (Purple Label) — The Better Jar

Aroma is the spicier of the two — 2 out of 3 on Redbloom’s own scale, which I’d put at a 3 on mine. The heat is real: front-of-mouth warmth from the Sichuan chili flakes, a lingering habanero burn that builds and sticks around, and a slight tingle from the peppercorn. For a gut-friendly jar, it doesn’t hold back.

Flavor-wise, Aroma is more complex than Umami across the board. The floral and ginger notes are pronounced upfront. There’s a citrus-like brightness that I didn’t expect. The star anise and cardamom sit underneath and give it depth. Less salt than Umami, which lets the aromatics breathe. The name “Aroma” makes sense — this jar smells better than almost anything I’ve opened, and the flavor tracks with the smell.

Full review: Redbloom Aroma Chili Crisp Review

Umami (Yellow Label) — The Weaker Jar

Umami is the milder variety — 1 out of 3 heat, which reads as barely there. A low burn sits on the tongue briefly and fades without character. Less flavor complexity overall. More salt. And the big problem: no actual umami.

I didn’t get hardly any umami out of this. “Umami” as a flavor comes from fermented components — soy, miso, fermented black beans, dried mushrooms in concentration. Redbloom’s formula doesn’t include any of these. The lion’s mane mushroom is present but at too low a concentration to produce the deep savory richness that the name promises. Salt picks up some slack, but salt isn’t umami. It’s hard when you don’t have soy and you don’t have the fermentation components.

If you want actual umami in a chili-forward condiment, something with fermented soybeans — like Lao Gan Ma’s Chili Oil with Fermented Soybeans — gets there through the ingredients that produce it. Fermented products are arguably good for gut health too, which makes the exclusion from a gut-health product harder to understand.

Full review: Redbloom Umami Chili Crisp Review

The Heat Scale Problem

One more thing. The label heat indicator is genuinely confusing. Both jars show three vertically stacked flames — some white, some orange. No legend. No explanation. I had no idea which variety was supposed to be spicier from the packaging alone. I wish they did this differently.

After tasting both: Aroma has two orange flames and one white (spicier). Umami has one orange and two white (milder). So the flames read bottom-up and orange means active heat. But that should not require detective work at the grocery store. A simple “mild / medium” text label would solve it. Label design matters — when your two products look nearly identical on the shelf, the heat indicator is the decision point, and Redbloom makes that decision harder than it needs to be.

Which One for What

Buy the Aroma if: You want a gut-friendly chili condiment with genuine flavor complexity. Works as an oil drizzle over rice, noodles, eggs, or into soup. Strong mixing candidate — pair it with something crunchy like Fly By Jing Extra Crunchy to fill the texture gap.

Skip the Umami if: You’re looking for umami flavor. It’s not here. The milder heat doesn’t compensate for what it loses in complexity compared to Aroma. At the same price, for the same jar size, with identical ingredients — there’s no reason to choose this over its sibling.

Buy both if: You’re specifically interested in testing how identical ingredients produce different flavor profiles. That’s a genuinely interesting experiment. But as a practical purchase, one Aroma jar gets you everything you need from Redbloom.

Is Buying Both Worth It?

No. At $14.99 each ($2.36/oz), these are premium-priced jars. The Aroma earns that price through flavor complexity and a unique oil infusion. The Umami doesn’t — it’s a milder, saltier, less interesting version of the same thing. I wouldn’t mix the two together, either. They share the same strengths (oil) and the same weaknesses (bits), so blending them doesn’t create anything new.

If the two-pack is discounted on Amazon, you’re not losing money trying both. But if you’re choosing one, it’s Aroma every time.

Verdict

Redbloom’s Aroma is the jar to buy. Floral, gingery oil with real heat, a clean ingredient list, and a gut-health approach that doesn’t strip out the flavor. GOOD — held back only by the total absence of crunch. Umami is a SKIP — same formula, less flavor, no umami, no reason to choose it over its sibling.

The real takeaway from this comparison: Redbloom’s innovation is the oil, not the crisp. When you can make eight aromatics taste distinct and layered through infusion alone, you’ve built something worth buying. When you put chewy chili flakes in that oil and call it “crisp,” you’ve oversold what the jar can deliver.

One jar is worth trying. The other isn’t. Purple label. That’s the one.

Buy Redbloom Aroma on Amazon — $14.99