Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Paprika

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

Paprika is more than a smoky Hungarian spice. Actually, that's not true, that's exactly what it is. But it sure is delicious!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is short stuff. Do you like paprika? I don't think I've ever tasted paprika enough to determine whether I like it or not.

Really? All right. That surprises me. I've had goulash, I guess. I've eaten Hungarian food, so I'm sure I have, but I've never been like, I love paprika, you know? Well, I love paprika. I love smoked paprika specifically. And this show is about paprika, and you mentioned Hungary,

and we'll get to why Hungary is known for paprika in a second, but it's actually the Hungarian word for pepper. It is from the... And by the way, thanks to Patty Rasmussen, and how stuff works for this. But it comes from the capsicum annum variety from the longum family. And it's a pepper.

It's a long, bright red pepper, and the flavor can be super hot, or not that hot, but hot-ish. It can be sweet, it can be smoky if it is indeed smoked over a fire. And a lot of the paprika you'll see, this is what you see if you see the orangey red sprinkles on a deviled egg.

That's paprika. Yes, for sure. It's huge in Central Europe, but Hungary is like the Studio 54 of the paprika world. But it's also big in Spain and Portugal as well. And since you like it smoked, you would like the Spanish and Portuguese paprika because they take for granted that paprika is smoked

so much so that a woman named Nancy Waldeck, who's a chef and cookbook author that House of Works interviewed for this, says that they don't even put the smoked on the label. You just know what's smoked, basically. Yeah, that's how smoked it is. It's so smoked. The reason that Hungary is known for it

is because they really adopted it. It's not native to there, which is really surprising to me. It's actually native where you think it would be, is Mexico and Central America. But it found its way to Hungary through the Balkans, apparently, and it grew really, really well there in abundance. And so it became sort of the national spice

because it was so abundant that it obviously made it less expensive because there was so much of it. And at a time when spices were sometimes reserved for people that had more wealth, you could get paprika even if you didn't have a lot of money. And so Hungary said we are gonna base everything we make almost off this stuff.

Yeah, what's funny though is that Nancy Waldeck points out that still, even if you go to Hungary, it's basically paprika and goulash, or paprika and goulash are the two main dishes that paprika's used in. Although in the countryside, they'll use it in mushroom soup and some other stuff too, but it's still like the two main dishes

anyone thinks of for paprika outside of deviled eggs. Yeah, Emily went to Hungary this year. Oh yeah, did she go to Budapest? Late last year. Yeah, she went to Budapest. Her friend was working over there, so she had a kind of a free place to stay and she was up for an adventure.

And I was like, go have your adventure. She said, I went to Naskin and I said, fine, be that way, go to Hungary. And she had a great time and had tons of paprika. That's one of the coolest towns I've ever been to. You mean I went for New Year's, One Year's, awesome. Yeah, I've been there too. And our good friend Raymond, the puppeteer,

is puppeting in Hungary right now. Oh man, that is such a Raymond move, that's awesome. I hope he's had one this time. Whereas Emily says Budapest, because that's how you're supposed to say it. I wanted to and I was like, Josh, don't do it, don't do it. Just say Budapest. I came back from it saying that and I got enough like,

come on, that I'm just finally back to Budapest. Alright, should we take a break? Yesh'd. I'll repeat right back. Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check. So she's like, oh no. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States

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gaslighting, love-bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, stuff you should know. I'm still laughing from one minute ago. Thank you, two. I think we're at two now.

That was very funny. That was very funny. So, thank you. So, I love this article. It says, Paprika Pride Runs High in Hungary. Again, remember, this is the national spice. And there's a Paprika Museum in the village of Roche T. And you can get, basically, if you go to Hungary,

Nancy Waldeck says, expect to see maybe 20 different kinds of Paprika. Not brands, like varieties of Paprika on the shelves in any given grocery store. But despite there being so many, there's actually just four official grades, at least. There's plenty of different kinds, but there's grades as far as Paprika is concerned.

There's special gourmet, noble, and rose. And those don't really give you any kind of indication of what Paprika you're getting at all. No, I think they just sort of break it up into how fine or coarse it is. And maybe whether it's sort of a milder one, or a sweeter one, or a hotter one. Yes, that's pretty much it.

But so you've got special, which is very fine, sweet and mild. I think that's pretty much the Paprika that you would get here in the United States, that people would put on like their deviled eggs. Yeah, it's pretty mild. You don't wanna blast people with the heat. So gourmet is slightly coarse.

I've never had coarse Paprika, have you? No. I'd be very interested. And it can be hot or mild. Noble is a coarse grind. So not even slightly coarse, this is coarse. It's just basically a lump of Paprika, I guess. And it tends to be light red.

I'm not sure what the taste can be. But then the rose is dark red, and that one can be very hot. So if you see a dark red Paprika, and it says rose on the label, be forewarned. Yeah, it's got kind of a bell pepper taste. It is like a chili pepper in that it can be hot, but it's not a substitute in a recipe

necessarily for chili powder. No, that's a good point. If you get a chili pepper powder, which is not chili powder, but if you get, let's say like a chipotle powder or any other specific pepper powder, then the Paprika may be kind of similar. But if you just get chili powder,

and I'm not sure if a lot of people know this, there's a variety of chilies and cumin and garlic a lot of times in it. That's like a powdered mix. Yeah, it's like seasoned salt basically, but the chili version of it. Sure. Chili powder is, right?

Yeah. Paprika is paprika. You can't even really compare it to chipotle or anything like that. It is its own thing. And so the HowStuffWorks writers go to great pains to point out that if you have a recipe that calls for paprika,

you have to use paprika for it. Don't try anything else. Don't try anything funny, or the people from HowStuffWorks will come to your house and take all of your spices. And apparently it's the kind of spice you don't want to buy a ton of because it goes bad quicker than other spices because of these natural oils.

And it's just gonna go bad sooner. So don't keep it near heat. Keep it in a dark jar in a cool place. And if you go to use paprika, if you don't use it much and you go to use it like six months later, and it is brown, then it's no longer paprika and don't use it.

Right. But luckily it's so cheap, you can just replace it pretty easily. It's not a big tragedy if it goes bad. The thing is, it's such a, in the United States especially, such an innocuous overlooked spice

that I think this should be one of those impetuses where people go out and buy paprika and then start looking for recipes to use it in. Just try something new. This is a great opportunity to do that, everybody. Totally. So you can try a paprika-ish goulash and then Nancy Waldeck says,

try a romesco sauce, which is an old world sauce from Spain and Portugal. And we say, go forth, try something new. And I think Chuck, that means that short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen

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