You have probably walked past them dozens of times in a Spanish supermarket without giving them a second glance. Small, round, wrinkled and dark red, ñora peppers don’t exactly compete with the bright piles of fresh peppers in the fruit and vegetable aisle.
But if you live on the Costa Blanca and enjoy local food, this is one pepper worth getting to know.
The ñora plays an important part in traditional cooking in this part of Spain, particularly when it comes to rice dishes, stocks, sauces and some of the recipes that have passed through local families for generations.
In fact, Alicante takes its rice so seriously that ñoras have featured among the ingredients supplied to chefs taking part in the city’s official arroz a banda competition. They also appear in traditional Vega Baja recipes such as olleta alicantina.
What is a ñora pepper?
A ñora is a small, round red pepper that growers leave to ripen before drying it.
Once dried, it develops the dark, wrinkled appearance that makes it so easy to overlook on the supermarket shelf. However, cooks don’t buy ñoras for their looks. They use them for the flavour and colour they bring to a dish.
Unlike a fresh pepper, you wouldn’t normally slice one up and add it to a salad. Instead, cooks often soak the dried pepper in warm water until it softens, remove the seeds and scrape the flesh away from the inside of the skin.
Other recipes call for briefly frying the ñora before crushing or adding it to the other ingredients.
And briefly really does matter.
Leave a dried ñora in hot oil for too long and it can burn, which gives it a bitter taste and can spoil the flavour you’re trying to create.
Why do we see ñoras in Costa Blanca cooking?
Rice provides one of the best examples.
Alicante has a huge tradition of arroces, or rice dishes, and local cooks use ñoras in some traditional recipes to help build the flavour before the rice even reaches the pan.
This is one of the reasons two rice dishes that look fairly similar can taste completely different. The stock, sofrito, spices and other ingredients that go into the base often do much of the work.
Peppers weren’t originally Spanish
For something that now feels so firmly established in Spanish cooking, peppers have travelled a very long way to get here.
Capsicum peppers originated in the Americas and reached Europe following Spanish voyages across the Atlantic from the late 15th century onwards.
Over the centuries, growers developed and cultivated different varieties, while regional cooks found their own uses for them.
Today it’s difficult to imagine Spanish food without peppers. They appear in salads, stews, rice dishes, sauces and tapas, while supermarkets devote plenty of space to fresh, dried, roasted and ground varieties.
The pepper has certainly made itself at home.
Red, green and yellow: What’s the difference?
Move back to the fresh produce aisle and things initially look much more familiar.
Large red, green and yellow peppers are among the most common varieties, but the difference isn’t simply cosmetic.
Growers generally pick green peppers before they fully ripen, giving them a fresher and slightly sharper flavour. Depending on the variety, leaving the pepper on the plant allows it to ripen further and change colour.
Red peppers have normally ripened for longer and tend to taste noticeably sweeter. Yellow and orange varieties also have a sweeter flavour than many green peppers, although the exact taste depends on the variety.
That difference becomes useful in the kitchen.
A green pepper works well when you want a stronger savoury flavour, while a red pepper adds more natural sweetness. Spanish cooks often use peppers as part of a sofrito, the cooked mixture of vegetables that provides the starting point for countless dishes.
Why do roasted peppers taste so different?
If you’ve only eaten peppers raw or quickly fried, roasting them can come as something of a surprise.
Heat softens the flesh and brings out more of the pepper’s natural sweetness, while allowing the outside to blacken slightly adds another flavour altogether.
After roasting the peppers, many cooks cover them or put them into a container for a short while. The steam loosens the skin and makes peeling much easier.
Once peeled, they don’t need much attention. A little olive oil and salt can be enough, although roasted peppers also work well with fish, meat, salads and other vegetables.
You’ll find them served as tapas and starters across Spain, and jars of ready-roasted peppers are a familiar sight in supermarkets.
Then there are Padrón peppers
Pimientos de Padrón are small green peppers come from Galicia in north-western Spain, although you’ll now find them on menus and supermarket shelves throughout the country.
The usual preparation couldn’t be much simpler. Cooks fry the whole peppers in olive oil until the skins start to blister, then add coarse salt before serving them.
Their reputation comes from something else entirely.
Most Padrón peppers taste mild, but traditionally an occasional hot one can appear among them.
That gave Spain the saying: “Pimientos de Padrón, unos pican y otros no.”
In English, that roughly means: “Padrón peppers, some are hot and some are not.”
Commercial growing has made the fiery surprise less common, but it’s still something to remember when somebody puts a plate in the middle of the table.
Red doesn’t necessarily mean hot
The ñora also teaches us another useful lesson about buying peppers in Spain: don’t assume something will be spicy just because it’s red.
Many Spanish red peppers provide sweetness, colour and flavour rather than chilli heat.
If you’re checking a Spanish label or menu, the word to remember is picante, which means hot or spicy.
Dulce means sweet or mild.
Pimentón starts life as a pepper
Pimentón is Spanish paprika, and producers make it by drying peppers and grinding them into a fine powder.
However, not every jar of pimentón tastes the same.
Pimentón dulce gives you the sweet or mild version, while pimentón picante adds heat. You may also find pimentón agridulce, which falls somewhere between the two.
Smoked varieties add another choice and can give a dish a very distinctive flavour.
It’s worth checking the label rather than simply grabbing the first jar marked pimentón. If a recipe expects a mild paprika and you enthusiastically add a couple of spoonfuls of the hot version, dinner may turn out rather differently from the one you had planned.
What about the long dried peppers?
Just when you think you’ve got Spanish peppers worked out, another one appears.
Alongside ñoras you may see pimientos choriceros, particularly among dried ingredients.
They are not the same thing.
The easiest way to tell them apart is their shape. Ñoras are generally small and round, while choricero peppers are longer.
Both add flavour and colour to food, but Spanish cooks traditionally use them in different regional recipes. Choricero peppers have particularly strong links with northern Spanish and Basque cooking, while the ñora has close associations with Mediterranean and south-eastern Spanish cuisine.
Bridging the Gap’s recap
- Ñoras are small, round dried red peppers with an important place in Mediterranean and Costa Blanca cooking.
- Local cooks use ñoras in rice dishes, stocks, sauces and traditional recipes.
- A traditional Vega Baja olleta alicantina recipe includes ñora with garlic and cumin.
- Alicante’s official arroz a banda competition has included ñora among the ingredients supplied to competing chefs.
- Green peppers generally have a sharper flavour, while ripe red peppers tend to taste sweeter.
- Padrón peppers are small green peppers usually fried whole and served with coarse salt.
- Most Padrón peppers are mild, although an occasional one can be hot.
- Picante means hot or spicy, while dulce means sweet or mild.
- Pimentón is Spanish paprika made from dried and ground peppers.
- Ñoras and pimientos choriceros are different peppers, so don’t automatically swap one for the other in a recipe.
