I’m Never Buying Smoked Paprika Again, Here’s How To Make Your Own

I had a hard time finding a GOOD smoked paprika, so I made my own and wrote this blog post. Needless to say, I will never buy smoked paprika at any store again!

Ingredients:

4 red bell peppers

22 red mini sweet peppers

Tools needed:

Sharp knife

Cutting board

Food processor

Rubber spatula

Sheet pan

Parchment paper

Spice grinder

Smoker

Lump charcoal

Oak wood splits

How to make it:

First, warm up your smoker. I am using my offset smoker to dry the pepper mash with using lump charcoal as the heat source and oak for the smoky finish.

Wash the peppers and let air dry on a clean kitchen towel. Cut the tops off the peppers. Next, cut the peppers in half and remove the seeds. Cut the peppers into smaller pieces, about 1 inch thick slices. Place the cut up peppers in a food processor and pulse a few times to break them down. You’re looking for the peppers to be broken down into small, rough mince sizes. I call this a pepper mash.

Place the parchment paper down on the sheet pan and spread the pepper mash evenly across the pan.

Place the pan with the pepper mash onto your smoker on the rack furthest away from the fire box. The smoker temperature needs to be kept at 200-225 F for best results. I try to only smoke the pepper mash when I have the smoker going. I found that if I try to smoke chicken or pork at the same time, for example, it takes much longer for to dry the peppers out.

The total smoke time will vary, but can take anywhere from 3-4 hours for the peppers to get dried. For my offset smoker, I need to add some charcoal and wood every 45 minutes to 1 hour.

During the smoking process when I need to add more wood/charcoal, I mix the peppers on the sheet pan to help the ingredients dry quicker. This exposes a different part of the peppers on the pan to a part of the pan that may get more or less heat to avoid burning the peppers and also helps with quicker drying. I also rotate the pan each time I need to add more wood for the same reason.

When the peppers are fully dried out, take the pan out of the smoker and let cool to room temperature. When cooled, the peppers should be dry enough to break apart like a potato chip.

In batches, add the dried pepper mash to your spice grinder and pulse it until the mash is broken down into a powder. Now you have your very own smoked paprika!

Place the newly ground paprika into a small jar with a tight fitting lid. This should stay good for a very long time. However, the flavor will dull out past the 3 month mark.

Enjoy on this goulash recipe!

When I have my chicken paprikash recipe ready, it will be linked here as well.

Enjoy.

Logan