Last year I decided to try to expand what I was growing in my garden to include more pantry staples. With only a couple of pepper plants in my garden, I was able to follow this simple process to make my own homemade paprika.
I decided to start with just two plants, growing Sweet Paprika Peppers with seeds from William Dam Seeds. Here is the link. Over the growing season as the peppers would fully ripen to a deep red colour I would harvest them from the plant. Once inside I would hang them by their stems with butcher twine and keep them in a cool dark place out of the way.
Once dry, the peppers feel almost like leather. With the business of the harvest season, I didn’t get back to processing the pepper for several months. This seemed to work out just fine for me.
Making Homemade Paprika
Once dry, I removed the stems and seeds from the peppers and ground them up in my blender. You could also use a food processor or even a coffee grinder, you might just end up with a slightly different texture. Once ground, I stored the paprika in an airtight sealed container.
From two pepper plants, I was able to have 82 grams of dried peppers to grind into paprika, this resulted in about 1/2 cup of the paprika total. As with many of these things, buying from the grocery store is obviously cheaper and easier, but there is something so satisfying about cooking with ingredients you’ve grown or made yourself. This homemade paprika has an intense pepper smell which I can’t wait to use in dishes.
Homemade Paprika
Ingredients
- Paprika Peppers
Instructions
- Harvest ripe peppers and hang with butcher twine in a cool dry place
- Once dry, remove seed and stems
- Process peppers in a blender or food processor until a fine powder
- Store in an airtight container.
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