Padrón peppers

Raw Padrón peppers
Fried Padrón peppers

Padrón peppers (Galician: pementos de Padrón) are a variety of peppers (Capsicum annuum) from the municipality of Padrón in the province of A Coruña, Galicia, northwestern Spain.[1] These are small peppers (about 5 cm long), with a color ranging from bright green to yellowish green. Their peculiarity lies on the fact that, while their taste is usually mild, a minority (10-25%) are particularly hot. Whether a given pepper ends up being hot or mild depends on the amount of water and sunlight it receives during its growth.

The peppers are customarily fried in oil and served as tapas.[2]

Characteristics

These peppers are grown along the banks of the river Ulla and its tributary Sar, especially in the greenhouses of the municipality of Padrón, hence the name. This pepper is also currently grown in various places of southern Spain and Morocco. The peppers are picked while their size is still small, starting as soon as mid-May. Traditionally, they were sold in the period going from late May until late October or, on occasion, even early November. However, the introduction of greenhouse plantations has made them available throughout the year.

Padrón peppers are small, with an elongated, conic shape. The taste is mild, but some exemplars can be quite hot, which property has given rise to the popular aphorism Os pementos de Padrón, uns pican e outros non ("Padrón peppers, some are hot, some are not").[3] Typically, there is no way of determining whether a given pepper will be hot or mild, short of actually eating it.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Gourmetour: Food, Wine & Travel Quarterly Magazine. INFE. 2000. p. 89.
  2. ↑ DK Publishing (15 February 2010). Back Roads Spain. DK Publishing. pp. 34–. ISBN 978-0-7566-7181-5.
  3. ↑ Robert Fedorchek (21 September 2010). The Translators. iUniverse. pp. 258–. ISBN 978-1-4502-4944-7.