Last year I grew and processed a small batch of paprika. By spring, we’d used it all.
But I had saved the seed from that fruit. So around the same time that we ran out of paprika in the kitchen, I sowed the seed; growing a truly ridiculous number of seedlings (the germination rate was much better than anticipated).
I ended up planting 9 seedlings into the garden in late spring. They joined the two plants that had overwintered from the first year to make 11 plants total.
And they have just gone wild.
I had already restocked 5 x the amount of dry paprika I processed last year, when I found myself with over 2kg of ripe paprika fruit.
So this year, I took the opportunity to play.
Options
I foolishly asked Bluesky what I should do with them. Many were surprised to learn what paprika actually was.
So quick recap: paprika is a variety of capsicum, and is related to chilis. “Paprika” actually refers to a few pepper varieties. I grow Alma Paprika.
It’s a cool little plant, but it’s a relatively obscure choice.
A few people suggested traditional European dips, spreads, and sauces. That sounds interesting, but perhaps that is a challenge for next season when I have a chance at growing the aubergines that seem to be required as well. A couple suggested stuffing my paprika. I am thinking that one through because I see potential for a recipe in that one.
It turned out there was only one real option for me this time, and I knew it all along. I had to haul out the charcoal barbeque and smoke them the old-fashioned way to make my own smoked paprika.
On one hand I didn’t want to go to all that effort. I could see it was going to take work over several days. On the other hand, I didn’t want to do anything else.
Hauling out the charcoal bbq
When we arrived at The Outpost, we inherited a pile of stuff from the former owners, including a small charcoal barbeque, a pile of charcoal, and hickory chips for smoking.
We’ve hauled it out a few times over the years. You might remember it from that time I made my own bacon from a wild pig. But it always feels like a lot of work to get it going. I also have very little idea what I’m doing.
Despite that, Richard got the charcoal going, and soon enough we were cooking.
I popped the paprika on the grill and sat beside the barbeque, babysitting it while reading Mansfield Park.
Charring
The paprika were on the barbeque long enough to char the skins. This effectively cooked the fruit, making it easier to peel.
I’d chosen to do the fruit whole, rather than in strips, because I thought it would help slow down the cooking process a bit. Lots of time to get good and smoky, without just burning my paprika to a crisp.
When each fruit was sufficiently charred, I transferred it to a bowl with a lid to encourage sweating. This helps the skins slip off.
Every so often I’d add some more hickory chips to the coals. And it took about an hour to get through 2kg of fruit.
Processing
This step kinda sucked, but I always think standing at a bench processing a large amount of anything kinda sucks. The fruit needed de-seeding, and because I had charred it, peeling.
The de-seeding was easier than it is with a raw fruit. They just popped right out. The skins were fiddly, but they do just slip right off when charred and sweated.
It took another hour of standing at a bench, removing what we did not need, and leaving me with a plate of soft paprika flesh.
At this stage all the self-doubt kicked in. The hours I’d spent smoking and preparing these things was clearly all-for-nothing. They didn’t smell smoky. I’d failed.
Dehydrating
Still, I’d come this far so I laid my paprika pieces out on the dehydrator trays, and set it to go for about 20 hours at 70ºC.
A few hours in, I needed to check my self-doubt. I went into the caravan (where the dehydrator lives) to check on them.
I was delighted to open the door and get hit in the nose with a smoky aroma. Of course, my head began telling me I’d over-done it and now they were too smoky.
Checking on them in the morning, they were pliable. Like a fruit roll-up. Not quite there yet. So I let them go for another 5 hours.
At the next check-in they were crispy, snapping easily in my fingers. I popped them all into a glass jar to store overnight before grinding them up the next morning.
Pulverisation
The final step was blending them into a fine powder using a coffee grinder. I was fairly certain this was going to be easier than non-smoked paprika.
Usually when I do this, I don’t pre-cook the paprika. I don’t peel it. And my theory was that peel makes the paprika quite hard. It takes a while to get to the powder texture, and usually requires a couple of passes through a sieve to get an even result.
Turns out, it didn’t make much difference. It still took a couple of passes through the sieve, and it still took quite a while to get there.
So I don’t think all this additional effort to take the skins off is necessary unless you also want the smoke and burned them a bit to get there.
Shutting up my inner-saboteur
I wore a mask because paprika is a pepper and it definitely has a touch of capsaisin to it. But even still, my nose told me this was good, and aroma is at least 80% of the point of a spice, right?
My saliva glands watered. I could smell the sweetness of the pepper and the hickory smoke. I couldn’t resist dipping my finger onto the spatula I’d been using to taste it.
It lit up my spice-receptors, but not in a major way. I don’t have much of a spice tolerance because I’ve lived with a man who considers black pepper spicy for most of a decade, but I do enjoy that feeling. It’s the perfect amount for me, but it’s mild. Gentle and quite pleasant. It doesn’t linger for a long time.
The smell told me I’d got it right and my little inner critic could sit down. Straight to the spice rack for that one. It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever created.
In the end, I got 88 grams of smoked paprika. That’s about 3 boxes if I were to buy it. About $10 worth.
But the quality. This stuff is pure and unadulterated. It is grown in my gardens with my hands using natural fertilisers and without any sprays at all.
To me it is worth the several days processing and seasons of growing I put into getting it.
Notes for next time
As I was doing all this, a reader DMed me to tell me they’d shaken their prepared raw pieces in liquid smoke before dehydrating, and that had worked for them.
And that’s a very clever idea. If you’re reading this to learn how to make smoked paprika yourself, you should totally try that if you want to. It would save you hours and allow you to skip all the smelly and fiddly bits.
But the main reason I write this blog is as a diary of what I’ve done, so that I can do better next time. The public aspect of it all helps keep me accountable to actually writing it down as I go. If it helps others along the way, that’s a nice bonus. So as usual, I have some notes for future-me.
As I was sitting there, reading Jane Austen and babysitting the barbeque, I remembered the pile of wood I started after Cyclone Gabrielle 3 years ago.
At this point, that pile includes mānuka, pine nut, pōhutukawa, ake ake, some apple prunings, a bit of Taiwan cherry, and other assorted woods I’ve had to chop over the last 3 years. Most of it is perfectly seasoned, and perfectly-suited to smoking.
So mainly, I’d like to go harder on the smoking. Look at cold smoking. Consider wood-firing. Use different woods collected from the property to create the flavour. I really like the hickory, that works really well and smells literaly drool-worthy, but what else can we do?
Yes, that’s right, I want future-me to choose the even-harder route and learn an entirely new skill. So if you happen to have a favourite resource on the art of smoking, I’d really appreciate knowing about it in the comments.
Why not use all that beautiful wood this way? It’s not doing anything else. It all came from pruning, pest plants, or trees that fell over in storms. It’s as ethical as firewood can possibly be, and I grew it here. In many cases, I planted the tree!
A box of paprika (or smoked paprika) might be $2-3 in a store, but there’s an exponential jump in quality that comes with all this work. Quite simply, I think mine’s better, and worth more than that.
It’s possible that is my own delusion, but I was never growing my own paprika to save money or time. I was always doing it to get really good, massively flavourful ingredients to enhance my life through food. The idea of a big ol’ spoonful of this in a batch of boiled peanuts has been on my mind for days now.
So why not go the whole-hog? There’s a kick I get from figuring out how to do all that outside of the global trade system we are all otherwise reliant on.
I can’t do it for everything. But this works, and I absolutely plan to do it again.
If you’ve been inspired and would like to grow your own paprika, fresh Alma Paprika seeds are now available in the Kat’s Garden store.
