By taking salted chili as materials, the fermentation process in making desalted chili were optimized through orthogonal experiment, and the change of volatile flavor components before and after fermentation were determined by headspace solid phase microextraction gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (HS–SPME–GC–MS). The results indicated that NaCl, total sugar, total acid, reducing sugar and amino acid nitrogen content in desalted chili reduced significantly after desalination (P