What's Paprika, and Which Type Belongs in Your Dish?

Paprika is ground dried red pepper, and most jars add color and gentle sweetness rather than heat. The label decides the rest, because hot paprika adds a chile bite and smoked paprika adds wood smoke. Hungarian tins are sold by named grades, while Spanish pimentón is sorted by heat and may or may not be smoked.

What is paprika?

Every jar of paprika starts as ripe red peppers of Capsicum annuum, the species that also gives us bell peppers and cayenne. The varieties grown for the spice have thin walls and little capsaicin, so the powder tastes sweet and fruity long before it tastes hot.

The word is Hungarian, a diminutive of the Serbo-Croatian papar, meaning pepper.

In Hungarian and several neighboring languages, paprika also names the fresh pepper. A Hungarian recipe can mean either one, and the context usually makes it clear.

Peppers reached Europe from the Americas through Spain and Portugal in the 16th century, then spread to Hungary by way of the Balkans.

Paprika only became the defining Hungarian seasoning in the 19th century.

Plant

Capsicum annuum, mild thin-walled red varieties

Part used

Dried ripe pods, ground to a fine powder

Main types

Sweet, hot and smoked

Red pigments

Capsanthin and capsorubin, which dissolve in fat

Best-known origins

Hungary (Szeged, Kalocsa) and Spain (La Vera, Murcia)

Those two origins matter because each country dries and grades its paprika in its own way. A recipe written in one tradition rarely tastes right with the other country's powder.

What's the difference between sweet, hot and smoked paprika?

The three words on a label describe two separate things. Sweet and hot describe heat, while smoked describes how the peppers were dried.

Heat depends on what goes into the mill.

Capsaicin sits mostly in the pale inner ribs where the seeds attach. A powder ground from the flesh alone stays mild and bright red, and adding ribs and seeds makes it hotter and duller in color.

Smoked paprika is the odd one out. Its peppers dry slowly over a wood fire before milling, so the powder carries smoke whether it is sweet or hot.

Spain's Pimentón de la Vera, the best-known smoked paprika, spends days drying over oak before it is milled.

If a recipe names no type, it almost always means sweet paprika. Hot paprika at the same amount adds a real chile bite, and smoked paprika pulls the dish toward the grill.

How do Hungarian and Spanish paprika differ?

Hungarian paprika is dried without smoke and sold by grade. The grades differ mainly in how much of the flesh, ribs and seeds went into the mill, which sets both the color and the heat.

Most of it grows in the south of the country, around Szeged and Kalocsa. The ground paprika of both towns is protected in the EU, Szeged's since 2010 and Kalocsa's since 2012.

Producers and older standards list the grades slightly differently, but these are the names a shopper meets most often on a Hungarian tin:

Goulash and chicken paprikash are written for the sweet grades, from különleges to édesnemes. Many cooks add a smaller spoon of a hot grade beside the sweet one, because heat climbs much faster than color.

Szeged paprika also earned a footnote in science: at the University of Szeged in the 1930s, Albert Szent-Györgyi extracted vitamin C from local paprika by the kilogram, work that fed into his 1937 Nobel Prize.

Spanish paprika is called pimentón, and it is graded by heat as dulce (sweet), agridulce (bittersweet) or picante (hot). Spain has two protected kinds.

Pimentón de la Vera, from Extremadura, is dried over oak smoke.

Pimentón de Murcia, from the southeast, is dried in the sun or with hot air and carries no smoke at all.

That means a Spanish tin can be smoked or unsmoked, so the label must say de la Vera, ahumado or smoked before you can count on smoke.

When a recipe names a country, the difference shows on the plate. Smoked pimentón makes a paprikash taste Spanish, and a Hungarian sweet grade leaves a chorizo stew without the smoke it expects.

What does paprika taste like, and how much of it is color?

Good sweet paprika tastes of ripe red pepper, with a fruity sweetness and a mild, earthy finish. Its color does at least as much work as its flavor.

The red comes from capsanthin and capsorubin, carotenoid pigments found only in peppers.

Because those pigments dissolve in fat rather than water, a spoonful stirred into warm oil turns the oil deep orange-red. The same spoonful scattered into plain broth leaves red specks.

That color is a real job, since in a goulash the paprika is what makes the sauce red.

On deviled eggs, hummus or potato salad, a light dusting is mostly there to be seen. The pepper flavor is faint at that amount.

Heat is the one thing sweet paprika cannot add. It sits near the bottom of the Scoville scale, so a dish that needs a bite needs a hot grade or a separate chile such as ground cayenne.

Why does paprika burn so easily?

Paprika scorches faster than most ground spices because it is a fine powder of pepper flesh with natural sugar in it. In hot oil those sugars burn within seconds, and the powder turns from red to brown with a bitter, acrid taste.

Burnt paprika cannot be rescued.

The bitterness spreads through the whole pot, and wiping the pan and starting the base again costs less than trying to cover it. The usual Hungarian answer is a short, gentle bloom in warm fat with the pan already off the burner.

1. Soften the baseCook the onions or garlic in fat until soft.
2. Move the panTake the pan off the heat and let the sizzling calm down.
3. Stir in the paprikaAdd the powder to the warm fat and stir for 10 to 20 seconds, until the oil turns red.
4. Add liquidPour in stock, tomato or wine straight away, then return the pan to the heat.

The liquid is what protects it.

Once stock or tomato is in the pan, the temperature cannot climb past boiling, so the paprika can simmer for an hour without scorching.

Dry heat is the harder case. A rub on a grill or a sheet pan has no liquid to cap the temperature, and the red powder sits exposed until the food browns.

How much paprika should you use?

The amount depends on whether paprika leads the dish or supports it. A Hungarian stew built on paprika takes it by the tablespoon, while a rub or a garnish needs a teaspoon or a pinch.

Hot grades vary widely by producer, so a hot tin is safer started at about a quarter of these sweet-paprika amounts.

Oil does two jobs in a rub.

It dissolves the red pigment so the color spreads evenly. It also keeps dry powder from charring on a hot tray, the problem described above.

Sugar in a rub helps browning but raises the scorch risk, so a moderate oven suits a paprika rub better than a blazing grill. As the surface browns, the Maillard reaction builds savory flavor around the mild pepper.

A garnish is the exception, because it never meets the heat. It goes on after cooking, once the steam has settled, so the dusting stays red instead of turning into wet speckles.

What can you substitute for paprika?

The right choice among the paprika substitutes depends on which job the paprika was doing: color, heat or smoke.

Hungarian and Spanish sweet paprika can stand in for each other when neither is smoked, with only a slight change to the dish.

Ancho chile suits dark, savory food such as beans and braises. In a pale cream sauce or on deviled eggs its brown-red color and dried-fruit taste stand out.

American chili powder is a poor stand-in, since it is a blend with cumin, garlic and oregano that pulls a paprika stew in several directions at once.

How do you buy and store paprika?

Color and smell tell you more than the brand. Fresh sweet paprika is vivid red and smells fruity when the tin opens.

• Grade or originA Hungarian grade name or a Spanish DOP seal tells you how the powder was made.
• Heat wordSweet, dulce and édes mean mild, and hot, picante, csípős and erős mean a chile bite.
• Smoke wordSmoked, ahumado or de la Vera means the peppers were dried over oak smoke.
• Packing dateA recent date leaves more color and aroma to use.
• Tin over clear glassMetal keeps out the light that fades the red.

At home, a closed tin in a cool, dark cupboard keeps paprika best, because light and warmth break down the red pigments. A small tin used within its window on the shelf-life chart keeps more of both color and aroma than a large bag.

A dull, brick-brown color is the clearest sign of age in sweet paprika.

Smoked paprika is the exception, because its smoke can fade while the powder still looks red. A musty smell, clumps or insects mean a jar has gone bad rather than simply faded.

Labels on the jars matter too, because sweet, hot and smoked paprika look almost identical once they leave the tin.