The color and the pungency of red chili pepper powder, depending on the carotenoid and capsaicinoid contents, are important properties for this food ingredient. In this study the patterns of these two classes of compounds have been analyzed in samples of red chili powder during one year of storage at room temperature (20–24 °C) and at low temperature (− 18 °C), in order to investigate the eventual chemical changes occurring during storage, and to find a possible correlation between the behavior of the two groups of molecules