smoked paprika- a very popular ingredient in many sauces and marinades for meat. However, it is almost impossible to get it on the shelves of domestic supermarkets. Today we will find out if you can cook smoked paprika yourself.
Smoked paprika: where does it come from?
The homeland of smoked paprika is South America. However, today the production of this spice is put on the conveyor in many countries (USA, Mexico, Spain, India).
Smoked paprika is made from various varieties of sweet paprika. Ripe peppers are first harvested by hand and then dried. Now the fun begins. The collected paprika is sent to special two-story dryers. On the first floor, oak logs are slowly smoldering, and on the second floor, pepper is saturated with these aromas. Peppers are smoked for a long time, sometimes this process stretches for two weeks. Dried and smoked peppers are ground and packaged.
smoked paprika It has a very concentrated “smoky” flavor, so paprika goes especially well with meat dishes, smoked ribs, it is present in marinades and the famous BBQ sauce. The spice not only adds spice and piquancy, but also colors dishes in red-orange color due to natural coloring pigments.
Interesting fact: smoked paprika is used in the manufacture of the famous Spanish chorizo sausages, thanks to which they acquire their spicy taste and reddish burgundy.
According to the degree of spiciness, smoked paprika is divided into sweet (Dulce), semi-sweet (Agridulce) and spicy (Picante).
How to cook smoked paprika at home?
Smoked paprika at home will not be easy, but it is quite possible. If you have a smokehouse, then you just have to add the wood chips for smoking, lay out the pepper and smoke it for at least an hour. At the same time, the temperature should not rise above 70 degrees, and the paprika itself needs to be turned over from time to time so that the pepper is smoked from all sides.
You can cook homemade smoked paprika using the grill. After the next barbecue, do not rush to throw away the coals. Place a container with wood chips on the bottom of the grill, place a grate on top on which the paprika will be smoked, and cover the grill. Make sure that the temperature is approximately the same throughout the smoking phase.
If you do not have a grill, you can smoke paprika in a regular saucepan. To do this, put the wood chips for smoking on the bottom of the pan, cover it with foil and place a round grill with peppers. Cover the grate with a kitchen towel, close the lid and put on a small press. Homemade smokehouse is ready.
Most likely, the taste of real smoked paprika and home-cooked paprika will be very different. If you decide to bring a jar of smoked paprika from your next trip abroad, remember that the aroma of this spice quickly disappears, so you need to use it within a year.
The highlight of many meat dishes, sauces and marinades is smoked paprika. The seasoning has a unique aroma of a fire and gives the dish an exquisite and unusual taste. It is used in many countries of the world: Spain, India, Latin America, Mediterranean countries. This ingredient can often be found in foreign recipes, but it is very difficult to find it in domestic stores.
If you want to surprise your family or guests with a dish with an unusual smoked flavor, diversify and improve the taste of everyday food, then you need the secret of making smoked paprika at home.
Smoked paprika: what is it?
For the production of this seasoning, various varieties of sweet paprika are used. Ripe peppers are dried and then smoked. The smoking process is interesting: paprika is placed in two-story dryers, where oak logs smolder below, and pepper absorbs this aroma at the top. Paprika is smoked for a long time, sometimes up to two weeks. Then the fruits are crushed and ground into powder, which is packaged and sent to supermarket shelves.
The color of paprika is very appetizing: red-golden. As a condiment, it goes well with grilled dishes, meat, rice, baked potatoes, goes well with vegetables. You can add it to soups, stews, roasts, lecho, sauté, gravy. This wonderful spice will add spice and piquancy to dishes, and due to natural coloring pigments, it will also give an intense orange-red color.
The reddish-golden color of the spice will add a rich hue to any dish.
There are three types of smoked paprika:
- Sweetkuue
- Slightly spicy (semi-sweet).
- Burning (sharp).
Sweet smoked paprika can be consumed even by children. Seasoning of medium sharpness is used in sausages, which gives piquancy to their taste and richness - color. But if you want something really spicy, then it is better to choose a seasoning marked with the word "Pikant".
Remember: spicy smoked paprika loses flavor quite quickly. Therefore, you should not buy or make it in large quantities: you need as much as is enough for a year of use.
Smoked paprika at home
Not everyone knows the recipe for homemade smoked paprika. But to do this is quite realistic, although not easy. The methods described below are suitable for lovers of delicious cooking from natural products.
First of all, you need to find fresh paprika fruits. With modern gastronomic abundance, this task is not so difficult.
Paprika cooked at home is just as tasty and fragrant
- Cooking is greatly simplified if you have a smokehouse. Chips are laid out at the bottom (if desired, oak can also be prepared, as in classic recipe). The fruits are cut in half and smoked for three days. In order for the halves to smoke evenly, they need to be turned over from time to time. The temperature of smoking should be no higher than 70 degrees.
- Grilled. You can use the coals left over from the next barbecue. A container with chips is placed at the bottom of the grill, a grate is placed on top, and peppers are placed on it. The grill must be covered and the smoking temperature should be monitored, it should be the same throughout the entire process (50-60 degrees).
- Paprika smoked in a slow cooker. You will need: 4 peppers, vegetable oil (incomplete glass), a few cloves of garlic, a little vinegar, a pinch of salt and spices. A handful of sawdust is added to the multicooker bowl. Peppers are laid out on a wire rack and smoked for 40 minutes in the "hot smoked" mode. At this time, a marinade is prepared from garlic, vinegar, seasonings and oil. Ready pepper is poured with the resulting mixture. original and tasty snack ready!
- You will be surprised, but no less delicious pepper it works if you cook it in a regular pot. Chips are laid out at the bottom, covered with foil, a round grill with peppers is installed. The grate is covered with a kitchen towel, closed with a lid, and a press is installed on top. This version of a homemade smokehouse is quite suitable for making homemade smoked paprika.
- You can also smoke peppers in the smoke of a fire. This is the easiest, fastest and most affordable way to cook.
Whatever method you use, the result is a fragrant spice that will take pride of place in the kitchen. With the help of smoked paprika, you will be able to enrich the aroma and taste of familiar dishes, add spicy peppercorns to your unique cooking style.
I just adore seasonings, but the taste of smoked paprika was not familiar to me before. Having received my paprika with smoke, I first sniffed it and thought: Well, where will I add this? And then I got used to it and found advantages.
I chose from two paprikas as usual, according to the candy wrapper) and the price
I have this:
Frontier Natural Products, Smoked Paprika, Oak Wood Smoked
Paprika smoked on oak shavings. Kosher spice, non-irradiated, non-gmo and ethylene oxide free.
How it is smoked, I myself was interested.
Yes, like this, they collect ripe, slightly dried peppers in the sun of Spain in large hangars and smoke them, stirring lazily for up to 2 weeks. 
Paprika after grinding is very concentrated in taste, sweet with spiciness, deep carmine color and very fragrant with "smoke".
All these advantages of it allow you to turn any dish into a work of culinary art. 
At first, this smoke seemed too saturated to me and I added it only to meat, then I noticed that during heat treatment, the taste gradually disappears, leaving a hint of smoked meat. Then she grew bolder and began to add it to stews, soups, to scrambled eggs, and even sprinkled it on ice cream. Nowhere was the seasoning superfluous and did not interrupt the taste of the dishes.
Well, where I especially liked to add it, so it's in marinades. The ribs are outstanding!
Oh, sorry, if you have been on a diet since September and have been reading all this, for you I have a simple and tasty recipe for an assortment of cheeses marinated in Czech style, where the paprika opened up for me on one more side.
We spied this dish in Prague, a very tasty snack for wine. The bottom line is that cheeses are marinated in oil, which has drawn all the flavors from herbs and spices.
We need cheeses 200g each:
- Camembert or brie
- Suluguni or Adyghe
- Dor blue
- Parmesan
- Brynza
- Sheep cheese(very tart, so optional)
- Rosemary a couple of branches
- Thyme also a few threads
- Garlic 5-6 cloves
- smoked paprika 1/2-1/4 tsp
- mustard seed
- Chilli
- Pepper black, red, and white
- Onion a couple of circles (not rings)
- Olive oil, not necessarily Extra Virgin
- Salt not needed here, but you can add to taste
I poured half a teaspoon of smoked paprika into one jar, and decided to leave the other only on herbs. Everything stayed for about a month. The cheese on herbs seemed to me tender, Provencal, herbs and garlic were felt most of all, but there was not enough spice. I liked the cheese with paprika more, it was softer in texture and the sharpness was very relevant, with a slight hint of smoking. In short, a jar of herbs went to the far shelf of the refrigerator, and when I took it out after 2 weeks, I noticed mold breaking through, not that noble blue, but noble, ordinary mold. Whereas the jar of paprika was mold free. It turns out that smokey paprika is also a kind of preservative. I use this feature of it when drying tomatoes, usually Sun-dried tomatoes stored in the refrigerator for no more than a month.
The marinade oil that remains from the cheese is more valuable to me than extravergen. Very fragrant, tasty, with cheese sediment. I just love spaghetti with it!
Expand your flavors!
No, my pen will not tire of singing odes to spices from Simpli. And this seasoning for me is a wonderful miracle, changing the character and “raising” the taste of any dish. From sandwich to stew.
10% discount until Wednesday, June 21, plus 10% on a basket of $ 60 until Monday evening with a promo code SummerRU.
V In this review, I will change the traditional writing sequence and first talk about your impressions.
P This miracle arrives in a traditional Simpli jar, under a plastic screw cap with holes of different sizes. 
P the powder is small, powdery, but does not stick together and does not gather into lumps. Smells like smoked paprika. And nothing more. And the taste is the same. Someone does not feel paprika and feels only smoked meat, well, everyone has different receptors. The smell and taste are absolutely natural, pleasant, without the slightest chemistry. The seasoning is not burning, a little spicy, and at the same time the taste is very bright.
P When added to any dish, it gives a smoky flavor and aroma. In my experience, it is better not to heat it for a long time, because the smell weakens. If you add paprika at the end of cooking, you will need less paprika.
TO Simpli's Roasted Paprika is a great natural alternative. liquid smoke”, consisting of water and chemical compounds. I do not even want to delve into its composition here. So if you want to indulge in smoky-flavored dishes or change the taste of a familiar meal, consider smoked paprika.)
And the word of the manufacturer.
Certified Organic by QAI
Certified Organic by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
CAS
WITH A sweet yet sassy cousin of the chili pepper, paprika is used to add a warm, natural color and slightly spicy flavor to soups, stews, cereals, and a variety of appetizers.
Botanical name: Capsicum annuum L. var. annuum, Capsicum annuum
Also known as red sweet or capsicum, paprika (Capsicum annuum) is larger and much weaker than chili pepper. A herbaceous annual plant growing to a height of 20 to 60 inches, sometimes woody at the bottom, the leaves are dark green above and lighter below. The flowers are white, the fruits are green at first, then turn red, brown or purple; red fruits are harvested as paprika.
O The natural paprika looks fresh and green, while the Spanish variety is more pungent and the Hungarian variety is brighter. Although Spanish and Hungarian paprika have become more similar to each other, since today Hungarian peppers are crossed in such a way that they taste like sweeter Spanish peppers. However, they still look different; Hungarian and domestic peppers are more pointed, while Spanish ones are smaller and rounder. Hotter paprika is usually made by adding cayenne pepper to the powder to increase the heat.
Recommendations for use.
A Rich in color, richly sweet paprika is a great condiment to have on hand at all times. Use it to add charming color and slightly tangy sweetness to any dish. Try it with cheeses and spreads, appetizers, salads, egg dishes, marinades and smoked meats. Add it to the flour used to dust poultry, meat dishes and seafood, and also add to salad dressings where it will impart color and work as an emulsifier (combining oil and vinegar). Spanish, Turkish and Portuguese soups, stews and casseroles depend on paprika, as does Indian tandoori chicken. Paprika is traditionally used in Hungarian goulash, paprikash, meat products and hot sausages.
Bon Appetit!
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Smoked paprika is an exquisite seasoning, loved in many countries of the world. She first appeared in sunny Spain, and today it is produced in Latin America, Asia, India, the countries of the Mediterranean coast.
What is smoked paprika?
Ripe paprika fruits are first dried and smoked in a smokehouse on oak chips, and then crushed and ground into powder. In this form, this spice enters the shelves of shops around the world. It has a stunning appetizing color - golden red. And its aroma goes well with meat, vegetables and everything that is supposed to be grilled. Real smoked paprika is divided into three groups: sweet, slightly spicy and very hot.
What is it eaten with?
When ground, this seasoning diversifies and improves the taste of borscht and stew, gives wonderful notes to roast, bigus, lecho and sauté. It is incredibly good for fish and meat marinades. It can be added to sauces vegetable casseroles, adjika, sauces.
If you like spicy, you will definitely like smoked paprika marked "Pikant". Just keep in mind that this seasoning tends to lose flavor, so try to buy as much of it as you can use in one year. Sweet smoked paprika will appeal even to children. It is this variety that is part of the world famous BBQ sauce. A variety of medium spiciness is often added to sausages. Sometimes the product owes its taste and color to this seasoning.
Homemade smoked paprika
Few people know how to cook this seasoning at home. After all, it is something purchased in our area is not particularly common. In fact, the method described below can be very useful for those who appreciate everything natural and like to cook deliciously. Is there a smokehouse? Well then, it's quite simple. Pour the wood chips on the bottom, spread the peppers cut in half on the grate and smoke for three days. Time depends on the degree of maturity and juiciness of the fruit. Be sure to turn the halves occasionally to ensure they cook evenly.
You can also use the grill. Put the peppers over the coals, close the lid, set the temperature to 50-60 degrees and follow the process. You can also smoke peppers over a conventional gas stove. Just tie them by their tails to a strong thread and hang them over the hob. Of course, the smoked paprika obtained in this way will not have the aroma of a fire, but in the absence of alternatives, this method is also not bad. If you live in the countryside, you can use another great way: smoke paprika in the smoke of a fire. In any case, after drying and smoking, the pepper must be ground into powder.
"Smoked paprika" in a slow cooker
You can cook such a very unusual dish of the same name. To create delicious original snack we need four peppers, an incomplete glass vegetable oil, a few cloves of garlic, vinegar, salt and spices.
Add a handful of sawdust to the charring bowl. We put the peppers on the grate and set the timer knob for 40 minutes. We select the “Hot smoked” mode. When the peppers are smoked enough, put them on a dish and pour the marinade from oil, vinegar, herbs and garlic. This smoked paprika is good both cold and hot.
