Short Stuff: Paprika

Paprika is more than a smoky Hungarian spice. Actually, that's not true, that's exactly what it is. But it sure is delicious!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is short stuff.
Do you like paprika? I don't think I've ever tasted
paprika enough to determine whether I like it or not. Really,
all right, that surprises me. I've had goulash. I guess
I've eaten Hungarian food, so I'm sure I have, but
I've never been like, Yeah, I love paprika, you know, well,

(00:27):
I love paprika. I love smoked paprika specifically. And this
show is about paprika. And you mentioned Hungary and we'll
get to why Hungary is known for paprika in a second.
But it's actually the Hungarian word for pepper. It is
from the and by the way, thanks to Patty Rasmuss
in it how stuff works for this. Yeah, but it
comes from the Capsicum annum variety from the long hum family,

(00:52):
and it's a it's a pepper. It's a long, bright
red pepper. And the flavor can be super hot or
not that hot, hottish, it can be sweet, it can
be smokey if it is indeed, you know, smoked over
a fire, and a lot of the paprika. You'll see
this is what you see. If you see the orangey
red sprinkles on a deviled egg, that's paprika. Yes, for sure,

(01:16):
it's huge in Central Europe, but Hungary is like you know,
the you know, Studio fifty four of the paprika world.
But it's also big in Spain and Portugal as well.
And since you like it smoked, you would like the
Spanish and Portuguese paprika, because they take for granted that
paprika smoke so much so that a woman named Nancy Waldeck,

(01:37):
who's a chef and cookbook author that the House of
Works interviewed for this says that, like they don't even
put it's smoked on the label. It's you just know
what's smoked. Basically, Yeah, that's how smoked it is. It's
so smoked. The reason that Hungary is known for it
is because they really adopted it. It's not native to there,
which is really surprising to me. It's actually native where

(02:00):
you think it would be is Mexico and Central America.
But it found its way to Hungary through the Balkans apparently,
and it grew really really well there in abundance, and
so it became sort of the national spice because it
was so abundant. That was it obviously made it less
expensive because there was so much of it, and at

(02:20):
a time when spices were sometimes reserved for people that
had more wealth, you could get paprika even if you
didn't have a lot of money. And so Hungary said,
we are going to base everything we make almost off
this stuff. Yeah. What's funny though, is like that the
Nancy Waldeck points out that still it's even if you

(02:40):
go to Hungary, it's basically pepri cash and goulosh or
peprikosh and gulosh are the two main dishes that paprikas
used it, although in the countryside they'll use it in
like mushroom soup and some other stuff too, but it's
still like the two main dishes anyone thinks of for
paprika outside of deviled eggs. Yeah. Emily went to Hungary

(03:01):
this year or late last year. Yeah, she went to Budapest.
Her friend was working over there, so she had a
kind of a free place to stay and she was
up for an adventure and I was like, go have
your adventure. She said, I wasn't asking, and I said fine,
be that way, go to Hungary. Uh. And she had
a great time and had tons of paprika. That's one

(03:23):
of the coolest towns I've ever been to. You me
and I went for New Year's one year was awesome. Yeah,
I've been there too. Uh. And our good friend Raymond
the puppeteer is puppeting in Hungary right now. Oh man,
a Raymond move. That's awesome. I hope, Emily says, because
that's how you're supposed to. I wanted to and I
was like, Josh, don't do it. Don't do it, just

(03:45):
say Budapest. I came back from it saying that, and
I got enough, like come on that. I'm just finally
back to Budapest. All right. Should we take a break? Yeshack, chuck.

(04:22):
I'm still laughing from one minute ago. Thank you too.
I think it's very funny. It's very funny, so thank you.
So um. I love this article says Paprika pride runs
high and hungry again. Remember this is the national spice
and there's a Paprika museum in the village of Roski
and you can get basically if you go to Hungry

(04:44):
h Nancy Waldeck says expect to see maybe twenty different
kinds of paprika, not brands, like varieties of paprika on
the shelves in any given grocery store. But despite there
being so many, there's actually just four official grades. At least.
There's plenty of different kinds, but there's grades as far
as paprik is concerned. There's Special, Gourmet, Noble, and Rows,

(05:07):
and those don't really give you any kind of indication
of what paprika you're getting at all. Now. I think
they just sort of break it up into how fine
or course it is, and maybe whether it's sort of
a milder win or a sweeter one or a hotter one. Yes,
that's pretty much it. But so you've got special, which

(05:28):
is very fine, sweet and mild. I think that's pretty
much the paprika that you would get here in the
United States, or that people would put on like their
deviled eggs. Yeah, it's it's pretty mild. You don't want
to blast people with the heat. So Gourmet is slightly course.
I've never had course paprika, have you, No, I'd be
very interested, and it can be hot or mild. Noble

(05:49):
is a course grind, so not even slightly. Course, this
is course, it's just basically a lump of paprika, I guess,
and it tends to be light red. I'm not sure
what the taste can be, but then the rows is
dark red and that one can be very hot. So
if you see a dark red paprika and it says
rose on the label before warned, yeah, it's um. It's
got kind of a bell pepper taste. It is like

(06:13):
a chili pepper in that it can be hot, but
it's not a substitute and a recipe necessarily for chili powder. No,
that's good. Like if you get a chili pepper powder,
which is not chili powder. But if you get let's say,
like a chipulta powder or a you know, any other

(06:34):
specific pepper powder, than the paprika may be kind of similar.
But if you just get chili powder, and I'm not
sure if a lot of people know this, there's a
variety of chilis and coumin and garlic a lot of
times in it. That's like a powdered mix. Yeah, it's
like seasoned salt basically, but the chili version of it. Sure,
chili powder is right, Yeah, paprika's paprika. You can't even

(06:57):
really compare it to chipole or anything like that. Is
it's own thing, and so they how stuff works writers
go to great pains to point out that if you
have a recipe that calls for paprika, you have to
use paprika for it. Don't don't try anything else, don't
try anything funny, or the people from a house stuff
works will come to your house and take all of
your spices. And apparently it's the kind of spice you

(07:19):
don't want to buy a ton of because it goes
bad quicker than other spices because of these natural oils,
and it's just gonna go bad sooner. So don't keep
it near heat, keep it in a dark jar, in
a cool place. And if you go to use paprika,
if you don't use it much, and you go to
use it like six months later and it is brown,

(07:40):
then it's no longer paprika, and don't use it, right.
But luckily it's so cheap you can just replace it
pretty easily. It's not a big tragedy if it goes bad.
The thing is is it's such a such a in
the United States, especially such an innocuous, overlooked spice that
I think this should be one of those impetuses where
people go out and buy paprika and then start looking

(08:01):
for recipes to use it in. Just try something new.
This is a great opportunity to do that everybody totally.
So you can try paprikash Goo losh. And then Nancy
Waldeck says, try Romesco sauce, which is an old world
sauce from Spain and Portugal. And we say, go forth,
try something new, and I think, Chuck, that means that

(08:22):
short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts to my heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.