Saturday 9 November 2013

Smoked Sweet Peppers

Earlier this year, in response to a post I had written about my intention to make Paprika powder from home-grown peppers and chillis, a gardening friend sent me a couple of dried "Garnet" Sweet Peppers, one of which had been smoked. I duly pulverised these in our spice-grinder to make a small quantity of delicious paprika. I was so impressed that I subsequently bought some seeds and grew some "Garnets" for myself.


I grew the peppers just like I grow chillis, although I did plant them in my big new raised bed rather than in pots like the chillis. I found that they took a very long time to grow and ripen, such that in the end I resorted to ripening some of them indoors. Most of my crop was given to my daughter Emma, for using green in stir-fries and such-like, but I kept the six best specimens for a repeat of the smoked paprika experiment.


The smoking part of the operation was carried out using my Cameron stove-top smoker. I smoked the peppers for a total of 6 minutes.


Afterwards I dried the peppers initially in the oven with the heat turned down very low, and then when the oven was needed for cooking I transferred them to the airing cupboard. They are not 100% dry yet, but when they are I will remove their seeds and then grind them up to a fine powder.  Goulash, here we come!

9 comments:

  1. What a great idea. I love your stovetop smoker. No doubt the paprika will be delicious. And how satisfying to have grown it yourself.

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  2. Very interesting. Can't wait to see the final powder and of course the goulash!!

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  3. That's an awesome idea. So the green was when there were still growing, do they turn red and you pull them or did the red happen after you picked them somehow?

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    1. A couple of them went red before I picked them, but mostly they were a sort of muddy green when I brought them in. The ripening process happened a lot quicker indoors - about a week to go fully red.

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  4. Fascinating something I didn't know you could do.

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  5. You sweet peppers like as local chilli pepper in Indonesia 'lombok Jawa'. Maybe lombok jawa is hotter and more tasty.

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  6. Brilliant idea to make them last, looking forward to seeing the colour of the powder.

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  7. I was proud, given our climate, to have got one chilli to ripen on the vine, but this is a gargantuan challenge you set yourself. Those look like six beauties. What wood do you use for smoking them?
    Looking forward to the next episode.

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  8. Wow! Nice recipe and thumbs up for self-grown chillies.

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