Besides being a popular spice for Yotam Otolenghi, Aleppo Pepper is becoming the go-to chilli for many cooks and food lovers.
Why would a style of chilli be called a pepper? After all it is not a peppercorn!
Let’s start with a bit of background. You may recall that Christopher Columbus was sailing west to get to the Indonesian spice islands, because he guessed that it would be faster than sailing west, around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean. This miscalculation meant that he bumped into the Americas, and to his chagrin found no nutmegs or cloves. Just useless things like tomatoes, tobacco, and among other things – chillies. Because these spicy pods had a tangy heat reminiscent of pepper, they called them pimenton, which is Spanish for pepper. To this day, in many parts of the world all members of the capsicum family are referred to as peppers.
Now, to Aleppo Pepper (which, you now know, is not a peppercorn but is a member of the solinaceae family with the botanical name of Capsicum annum).
Chilli pods get their heat from a substance called capsaicin, and this is held in the greatest concentration in the seeds and seed-bearing placenta on the inside of a chilli with some capsaicin in the skin. When you buy Chilli Flakes, you are getting all of the chilli chopped up, including the seeds and skin.
However, with Aleppo Pepper, you are just getting little flakes of chilli skin, no seeds and a little vegetable oil added. This gives a not very hot, tasty and slightly textured chilli flake that is so easy to sprinkle on food, add during cooking or even sprinkle over a take-away pizza.
Aleppo Pepper is so popular, we now have it available in a 250g pack.
To learn more about chillies, their history, processing and use, go to the Spice & Herb Bible 3rd Edition.
You will also find more chilli details here on this Blog: Chilli Essentials.