Paprika: Hungary's Pride

What would deviled eggs or potato salad be without the sprinkle of paprika? It livens up the appearance of any picnic food. I've always used it when making baked chicken breasts. Americans don't usually use paprika for its flavor. In fact, the common ways it is used won't bring out the delicate hot sweetness of it. Americans also have a tendency to pronoun the word wrong too, putting an 'a' in between the second 'p' and the 'r' (Pap-a-ri-ka). There isn't that middle 'a' (Pa-pri-ka).

Unlike most other spices, paprika isn't its own plant. It's the powder made by grinding up the pods of a variety of pepper plants. Usually the range is from the tomato pepper (sweet red pepper) to the milder forms of the chili pepper. Hotter peppers, which can be found in Hungary, Spain, California, and other regions in the U.S., can be used to make a spicier paprika powder.

Although paprika's history is associated mainly with Hungary, it's believed that the peppers used actually have their origin in Turkey and were introduced to Hungary in the 1600s. During those days, paprika was more of a hot spice than it is today. In the 1800s, the Paify brothers of Hungary created a sweeter tasting paprika that won them rewards. They came up with this new variation by removing the stalk and seeds from the pepper pods before grinding them. Hungary still makes a show of this exquisite spice during the harvesting process of the peppers. They thread the peppers onto long pieces of string and hang them up to dry outside the houses and along the garden fences.

Paprika can be used just for giving color to drab-looking food just by sprinkling it on top. This is what is happening with deviled eggs and potato salad. By stirring it into some oil and then adding it to the dish you are cooking, the mild hotness if it will come through.. Because of the sugar content in it, it's better not to cook it over high heat. This is a wonderful spice to use when making a pasta sauce or to use in stews, chili, and soups.

Most people don't know that the peppers used to make paprika have seven times the amount of vitamin C that an orange has. In 1937, Doctor Szent Gyorgyi won a Nobel Prize for his research about the vitamin in these peppers.

So often this spice is overlooked because so many are not aware of the flavor it can bring to food in addition to its ability to enhance the food's appearance. With the knowledge about how it can add flavor to blah-tasting dishes and all the vitamin C in it, we should be using paprika more often.