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Why bother making homemade paprika? Fair question. After all, the Spanish and Hungarians are better at it than we ever will be, right?
Why not just call up Penzey’s or somesuch and order some? Well, I do. But making something like paprika at home is not so much something I did out of necessity as it was an exercise in whether I could do it at all.
It’s not that I think the world is about to collapse and oh-where-oh-where will I get the paprika to make my chorizo or chili or goulash, not to mention deviled eggs? It’s that I have a fascination with how things are made; I am a sucker for those shows on Discovery Channel or NatGeo.
So I asked myself: “What would it take to make enough paprika for our household use for one year?” And just how do you make paprika?
Turns out making paprika is easy, but it takes a while. You basically need to start paprika long before you want the powder by growing the right kind of peppers. Almas or boldog peppers are standard: They’re vivid red peppers that aren’t too thick; bell peppers are not ideal. Why? Thick-walled peppers tend to rot when left to dry, although you can certainly use a dehydrator to prevent rot if all you have are ye olde bell peppers.
The reason paprika peppers are so special is because they have character. They are neither too sweet or too spicy. No matter what pepper you use, you want something in between. I find that poblanos, left to fully ripen, are another excellent substitute, but very different.
Here is a primer on all things paprika, if you want to go down that rabbit hole.
For my paprika experiment, I planted three Alma Paprika Pepper plants, and at the end of the season I had several strings of peppers hanging in our garage.
This first thing about making paprika I learned as I broke them into smaller bits to grind was this:Â Chiles need to be dried in arid, hot shade. Drying in the sun bleaches away color. Excess heat, like you’d get in an oven, adds an almost cooked aroma to the chiles.
And in all cases, humidity is the enemy. I dried a couple peppers in the (more humid, cooler) house and when I opened them up they were all fuzzy inside. Mold. I tossed them. None of the peppers in the garage had mold. (I live in Sacramento, California, where it is very hot and dry in the summer.)
Making the powder is pretty easy. Break the peppers into pieces small enough to jam into a spice grinder. I discard the seeds, because including seeds dilutes color and can increase the heat if you’re using hotter chiles. The grinding takes a few steps, because you always get a a few pieces that don’t want to grind. Keep sifting the bits through a fine-mesh sieve until you get an even powder.
That’s all there is to it.
In that first experiment, I wound up with 10 tablespoons of paprika from the peppers you see hanging in the picture. Definitely not enough for a year, but maybe for a few months — unless I wanted to make a huge batch of chorizo or Italian hot sausage. Given all this, I reckon I’d need 10 to 15 plants to supply me for a year.
The cool thing about this experiment is that 10 to 15 plants is actually a reasonable number in my garden, if I so chose to devote that much space to paprika. And since I am decent enough at growing chiles from seed, I could have a perpetual supply for nothing.
What’s more, my homemade paprika tastes just as good or better than the expensive kind I buy from Penzey’s. That was something of a surprise — and confirmation that there is no great mystery to making this spice. (Spanish smoked paprika is quite another thing.)
But still. Was it all worth it? The planting and the hanging and the months’ worth of waiting? Sure, if you have space and time. Grinding your own paprika is satisfying, and you get some really, really good spice out of it.
Living on a farm we have the space & my husband grows a huge garden. We make our own chili & have lots of capsicum to spare. After reading some of the comments he will put them in a smoker and cold smoke them. We will see how we go.
I have already ordered 6 varieties of Paprika peppers. I’m really looking forward to this project.
The Alma Paprika we grew this year were very thick fleshed and some got quite spicy by the time they turned red. Some remained mild at least while not yet fully red/ripe. I’m a fan of fully riening the peppers for max sweetness and spiciness. I roasted them in a hand-fashioned New Mexico style spinning steel mesh roasting barrel over grapewood fire. They char up best under an intense new fire and don’t get as black as he faster burning typical propane fired New Mexico chili roaster but the smokey flavor is fantastic. Hungarian Yellow Wax peppers can also be very spicy when ripe. We grew several varieties and it’s great to combine them. The Hungarian’s ick is fast to come on then soon you get relief from the heat with tremendous flavor. Candy-sweet Gypsy peppers mixed with fiery Fresno chilies that have a slow attack like jalapenos. The Alma Paprika were somewhere in the middle.Each offers it’s richness to the mix!
It is definitely worth it if you want to have some smoked paprika, and who wouldn’t! Traditionally they are smoked with European oak I believe, but I do it with pecan. It’s wonderful stuff and you don’t need to use much.
Hi, Hank — Yes! it was easy to remove the seeds from the DRIED peppers! I was think of how much trouble/time I find the process of removing seeds from fresh juicy peppers. Now to make the paprika and find a good recipe to make. Thank you!
Hello! This year I’ve grown Pakri-K Sweet Red Paprika Peppers, not knowing they’d be thin-walled peppers, which I find less satisfying for using in recipes — although they’re OK if I pick and use them before they start drying out.
Anyhow… your article above says “Seeds are no bueno.” which, translated means “no good.” Do you actually remove the seeds before making your paprika? Is there any easy way to do this?
Thank you!
KathyAnne: Uh, yeah. Open the pepper and pull them out. Not hard at all.
They will darken a lot from orange to deep red (Alma paprikas anyway), here in NE OHIO. I’ll make sure to split them open to increase drying, or just cut them and dry them in my oven which has about 100 degree gas pilot heat at all time.
Great thread. We grow lots of various kinds of peppers from bells to halapenos. Found a bunch of wilty-old discounted Hatch chills the other day and added them to the crop. Rinse, nit stems, and we trash most seed buds and throw them in the Masterbult smoker while other things are cooking for a couple of hours. Then we throw them in our Excalibur dehydrator for about ten hours at a low temperature, whip them in a Vitamix or Cuisinart, and let it go at that. Somebody in the thread suggested that paprika may lose flavor with age, but we are still using some of these chopped dried peppers kept in the freezer for three years or so, and believe me, not much has been lost;-) This may not be a strict paprika, but it follows your principle of insisting on using imagination. Someone mentioned using paprika in a rub, and our dried pepper combo is the core of the rub we use on ribs or spareribs cooked low and slow for ten hours or so. Yum;-)
I wonder if the Alton Brown herb dryer would spread up the drying time. He used a regular box fan with furnace filters to dry the herbs. Google it!
Thanks so much for the article! I’d been gardening for years when health problems took me away from it and now I’m back to it. “Back in the day” all bits and pieces of info was passed pretty much word of mouth, especially when it came to some of the Mediterranean peppers in my part of the country so I’m thoroughly enjoying the vast supply of info so many people are sharing online.
We live in a pretty dry climate and we do our drying in the greenhouse on the side away from the sun. We have an old egg incubator that I’ve used as a dehydrator for years and with our summer temperatures we only have to use a little air for perfectly dried foods.
P.S. I enjoyed everyone else’s comments too, many interesting ideas and tips to try, even talked hubby into (it didn’t take much convincing since he loves growing peppers more than anything else) to dig a smoker out of the shed so we can give smoking some a try. I’m still trying to figure out if it will be practical to dry all the peppers we need since we go through about ten pounds of various dried pepper seasonings a year.
In my opinion the best way to dry out a bunch of Chiles is to place them in a brown paper bag and set the bag on top of the water heater. Unless yours has insulation wrapped around it, that tank will pump out excess heat ad infinitum. Peppers go from wet to completely dry in less than a month. 😉
Great article. Here’s how I do it. First I make ristras about 16 inches long with red ripe serrano peppers and hang them in my pantry, which gets heated by my furnace, for about a year until they’re really dry. Then I pull the pods off, leaving the stems behind, and crush them by hand to get a feel for the moisture content., it should be quite low for good results. I then coarse chop the pods with a large knife before running them through the Cuisinart. I then pull out all the petiole pieces (where the pod attached to the plant) and other uncooperative bits, and continue the grinding process until it looks pretty much as your second picture shows.
I also do this with applewood smoked serrano chiles. It’s less time consuming since the smoking process drives out most of the moisture for you. It takes about 16 to 18 hours of smoking to get them fully smoked, but then you need to let them air dry for about 6 to 8 weeks. Then follow the same process as above.
I plan to try the air-dry method with a hot cherry bomb type chiles, my garden yielded about 25 lbs of these. My mentor says to cut these into thirds, remove the stems and seed and dry them outdoors in the shade (I’m in Colorado so this works well). If they are not dry enough when the weather stops cooperating, I will finish drying them in the oven at the lowest setting on baking trays. The side benefit of oven drying them is the whole house smells of wonderfull chiles!
Jennifer: You let them get red on the plant. They don’t really turn much in the drying process…
I am growing paprika peppers for the first time. Do I let them become red on the plant or do they turn in the drying process?
Josh: I am thinking about a dozen or so, but it depends on size. So figure on 4-6 ounces of dried peppers.
Dang, I bet that would be awesome in a ribrub. We grow quite a few peppers of sorts and have yet to try anything like this. How many peppers would you think would produce a cup of paprika?
I cut sweet red peppers into chunks and dry on the dehydrator and then grind in my high powered juicer and whala–paprika and it smells wonderful and has a rich full flavor.
Great article, thanks! I’m gardening for the
first time in my life, in a new community garden
( https://4thstreetgarden.blogspot.com/ )
I have on pepper plant that was labeled “pimento,”
and was trying to figure out what a pimento was.
The plant is small (maybe the size of two fists,
on on top of the other). It’s covered with tiny
peppers (think: the size of a pencil eraser).
The peppers are growing upwards from the stem,
which is different from every other pepper plant
I’ve seen. They’re a deep purple. And they’re
medium to hot spicy.
After reading your article I’m pretty sure they’re not
pimentos, though have no idea what they might be.
OMG – I LOVE THE INTERNET and at this moment, I LOVE TECHNOLOGY!
I live in Sunny, Hot, Humid FL and the info here on drying is great. I too am going to make paprika…because a friend gave me the seeds in a swap & why not. I’ll try just about anything once. Great info! Thanks.