Grow your own paprika?

[thistlebloom]

I like to hang dry peppers. Thick walled peppers will often mold or rot inside if drying conditions are not just right, sometimes even if it is arid and warm enough. You can slice and dehydrate any pepper, but sometimes this can change the flavor, you have to dry them for a very long time to get them past the leathery stage... and I wonder how thicker flesh would affect trying to grind it to a powder?
Thin walled peppers like cheyenne, (the one I am use to drying) you can just crunch them up and run it through a spice grinder, sift and grind again.

This is interesting .. Homemade Paprika ... but must find smoky pepper tips for my chef..

Lavender, do you think it would change the flavor appreciably if you were to dry them whole in a dehydrator?

 

[Lavender2]

One of the problems with drying peppers is the skins can easily bake or roast while the rest of the pepper is getting dried enough, if you use too much heat. A roasted pepper tastes much different than a fresh one. I have only used a dehydrator for fruit and jerky, but (this )suggests to set the dehydrator at 100 degrees and it will take several days. You can use the oven also, but we have roasted peppers on the grill and in the oven, and it doesn't take much to 'toast' the skins.

Then again, it may be a great new flavor you will like!

I found a smoked idea ... Smoked hot Hungarian ... where a dehydrator was used.

 

[thistlebloom]

There ya go Steve!

 

[digitS']

Well, maybe . . .

"after three grinds I had enough." I wonder if he means that he could no longer breathe and an ambulance had to be called!

My little bit of dried Super Chilies with the ground salt and onion/garlic powder required the opening of windows and venting the kitchen! I was thinking of just dropping a dried, smoked & seeded pepper in the blender with the rest of the bbq sauce ingredients. No reason why that shouldn't work, that I can think of.

@Lavender2 , Feher Ozon is a paprika pepper - Seed Savers Exchange and Territorial Seed tell us.

Steve

By the way, the local chef who made that prize-winning rhubarb barbeque sauce smoked the rhubarb . . ! I think you can even smoke the sauce - seems like Steven Raichlen does that. Good Heavens, I wish I had his equipment and talents!

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

I like to hang dry peppers. Thick walled peppers will often mold or rot inside if drying conditions are not just right, sometimes even if it is arid and warm enough. You can slice and dehydrate any pepper, but sometimes this can change the flavor, you have to dry them for a very long time to get them past the leathery stage... and I wonder how thicker flesh would affect trying to grind it to a powder?
Thin walled peppers like cheyenne, (the one I am use to drying) you can just crunch them up and run it through a spice grinder, sift and grind again.

This is interesting .. Homemade Paprika ... but must find smoky pepper tips for my chef..

To add on to why paprika peppers are thin-walled; chances are that in the indigenous country of the variety paprika pepper, the people there do not have access to an oven/dehydrator so resort to sun-drying them or similar. So the thin-walled peppers would be much easier to dry that way.

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Going off of memory (I'm sure that this is right) another variety of paprika pepper that I know of is "Aji Dulce" from Venezuela. I'll see if I can compile a list of paprika pepper varieties for you after dinner.

 

[Bluebonnet]

Bluebonnet's mention of Hendl got me to thinking how I really would like to make my own paprika. Since it loses its freshness and flavor so quickly, what I've bought in the store is usually not all that great. Does anyone know which varieties of red peppers would be good to grow for paprika?

Leutschauer Paprika Pepper is the one I grow and the best I have tasted.

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Leutschauer Paprika Pepper is the one I grow and the best I have tasted.

There's another one!

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don't know how much it would change the flavor to dehydrate peppers in a dehydrator, but I would at least split them open before I tried. That would probably reduce the drying time by half or more. It would work the same way if you hung them to dry, split them so they can dry out.

 

[journey11]

Thanks for all the suggestions so far everyone! I am going to look into each of them. I'd read that paprika can be anywhere from mild to spicy or a blend of peppers. I also heard that if you use it as is, just sprinkled on top, it will just add color. But when cooked into the dish, the deeper flavors will be released. And you would use quite a lot too, like a TBSP or two. I had heard of smoked paprika before and that it is soooo much better.

I've been making my own dried flakes or powdered peppers for cooking spice for a while now. I absolutely love peppers of all kinds. They are one of my favorite veggies, if I could ever pick just one veggie...I don't know. Supposed to be one of the best veggies for preventing cancer too.

I have dehydrated the Giant Red Marconi peppers and chopped them up and they are sweet and excellent to add to all kinds of dishes, my favorite one being pulled venison BBQ.

But as far as the hots go, I don't like them manually dehydrated. It ruins them somehow, and my dehydrator has adjustable temps on it too, so it's not just from overcooking. There's something about hanging and aging them that really improves the flavor.

So far I've done Cayenne, Chili, and Serrano peppers, with Serrano being the one I use most often because it's not just hot...it has a nice smoky flavor on its own. And the best way to hang them is to simply just leave them on the plant and pull the whole thing up, shake off the extra dirt and hang it upside down from the ceiling of the basement or under the porch rafters. They don't rot or discolor if you do it that way and also you don't have to worry about burning out your eyeballs after you've forgotten that you had just threaded hot peppers!

So I am really excited at the thought of growing paprika peppers. This will be fun.