Recipes with paprika

Paprika is dried, ground chilli and nothing more — but the word covers three different products. Sweet paprika mostly brings colour and a fruity base note; smoked paprika was dried over wood and imposes a flavour nothing can undo; hot paprika bites. A recipe that just says “paprika” almost always means the sweet kind, and the amount is measured in spoonfuls, not pinches.

Hungary treats it as a base ingredient rather than a final seasoning: in paprikás krumpli, lecsó and Hungarian stuffed peppers, it joins the softened onion and becomes the sauce itself. Spain uses it differently, as a finishing touch or in a sauce built separately, as with patatas bravas. Elsewhere it is a coloured signature poured over at the end: the paprika butter on Turkish mercimek çorbası, the red spoonful crowning Romanian fasole bătută.

The technical point fits in one line: it burns within seconds and turns irreversibly bitter. Pull the pan off the heat before stirring it in, work it into warm fat, then return it to the flame and add the liquid straight away. Store it away from light, too — it is a powder that fades quickly and loses its perfume within a few months.