Paprika is the spice of life in Hungary.
The full-bodied, warm taste of Hungarian paprika has no burning heat to it; the zing of the bright red pepper slowly buzzes through, illuminates, and lifts the other flavors of many national dishes while adding a sweet finish to every bite. No other pepper in the world adds this unique touch to a dish―not even the paprika peppers grown in their native soil in the Americas. In Hungary, paprika is grown in the Kalocsa and Szeged regions, where the climate is drier and the sun burns longer, giving the peppers their unique color and sweet zest.
While these peppers have been admired in Hungary for many centuries, many of the savory staple dishes of Hungarian cuisine didn’t exist as they do today until the last few centuries. Before then, paprika plants had been used solely as house decorations due to the peppers’ beautiful color and the plant’s hardiness. Soon, working-class Hungarians realized paprika could be used in traditionally bare-bones dishes like goulash (gulyás) to pack a cost-effective punch. During the culinary revelations of the last century, chefs realized the paprika’s color made their food look more appetizing and added a refined taste as a side effect.
The culinary innovation of the twentieth century produced chicken paprikash (csirkepaprikás), a chicken stew characterized by a sweet paprika gravy and always served with homemade noodles. Hungarian meat stew (pökölt) is a national dish with many regional differences, but every variation is grounded in the shared inclusion of paprika. Hungarian paprika is so sweet that it can even be used in desserts, like it is in paprika bread (paprikás kalács).
Think of the glowing, fiery red spice as the lifeblood of Hungarian cuisine, and get ready to taste pepper as you never have before.
