Marash Red Pepper Flakes

We’ve carried Marash pepper flakes for over twenty years. I can still remember the first time I tried them, and how different they were. The color was deeper, a glowing burgundy. They were moist. The flavor was full, roasted and toasted, evocative of the sun. I kept waiting for a rush of heat to hit my tongue but it never came. Instead, there was only flavor. A growing, intense, ruby red flavor that I turned over in my mouth again and again.

We import Marash pepper directly from Turkey.

When we started, we were the only ones in America to carry it. While there are other brands I’ve never had another that matched the flavor of ours, which is the highest grade known as “silk pepper.”

Marash’s harvest comes in late summer. In August, farmers pick peppers then dry them on white sheets under the sun. I’ve never seen the pepper harvest, but it must look incredible. Grass-green hills under cloudless skies, each covered in a dazzling uneven grid of snow-white sheets and racy red peppers.

The peppers sun dry for two weeks. At the co-op, groups of women carefully remove all the stems, seeds and the white interior flesh that grows the seeds. This is a key step—one that’s done especially for Zingerman’s, as a special order—and one of the reasons why this Marash pepper has so much flavor and so little heat. The seeds and white flesh store the most of a pepper’s capsaicin, the alkaloid responsible for burning your tongue. Seeds have a lot of heat but almost no flavor. Most other red pepper flakes have lots of seeds. You can spot them in cheap jars of red pepper flakes at the supermarket or pizza counters. They’re cream colored, sometimes white, while the red pepper flakes next to them are burgundy. Look inside a jar of Marash. You won’t see a single seed.

Last, Marash peppers are ground by hand and a touch of salt is added.

The first day I tried them, Marash pepper went on my shelf at home.

It’s never been without a jar since. It’s one of the few foods that you’ll find at almost every Zingerman’s employee’s home, too. At our warehouse we keep the Marash pepper in the freezer. I recommend you do the same at home. Marash pepper won’t go bad, but it will stay moist and more flavorful that way.

I use Marash pepper flakes in place of standard red pepper flakes. Pretty much anything I cook—or buy—is fair game, including eggs, pasta, vinaigrettes for salads, potatoes and pizza. Marash pepper flakes also make an excellent marinade for chicken, pork, or fish. I like to marinate with a recipe I got from Turkish journalist Ayfer Unsal. Juice half a lime and add enough water to absorb five tablespoons of marash. Grind in food processor or, if you have the time, a mortar and pestle. Add ¼ teaspoon sugar and a tablespoon of olive oil toward the end. Make up to one day ahead and rub over the food a few hours before cooking.

Sun drying is the oldest food technology still in use today. (I believe it predates fire, but hey, I could be wrong.) It’s not too common these days, since cheap electricity allows us to dry things much more quickly than the sun does. But sun drying can produce some incredibly flavorful foods including some of our favorites like sun dried tomatoes, couscous, peppers, and salt. And it can do so in an incredibly environmentally friendly way.

The first sun dried foods were a product of necessity.

Removing moisture helps to preserve food, and also made it lighter to carry, two reasons why the nomadic Berber peoples of North Africa started sun drying foods thousands of years ago. By processing wheat into sun-dried couscous they were better able to have a ready food supply, even if they had a year or two of bad crops. The fact that slow sun drying can also produce a lot more flavor must have been a bonus; the sun dried couscous made by the Mahjoub family in Tunisia is toasty, wheaty, and way more flavorful than any other couscous I’ve tried. The sun dried garlic spread that the Mahjoubs make is likewise deeply flavorful. The time it takes for the garlic to dry in the sun concentrates its flavor, enhancing its natural sweetness—the same sort of effect you get from roasting a head of garlic in the oven.

That intensity of flavor is a common theme amongst sun dried foods. Marash pepper from Turkey is a prime example. After being harvested in August, shiny red peppers are laid on white muslin sheets to dry in the sun for a week. The type of pepper used is prized because its thin flesh can dry fairly quickly; thicker peppers end up with a tougher texture. After drying, the stems, seeds, and white interior flesh of the peppers are removed, which reduces the heat level but maintains the flavor. The result is a burgundy pepper flake with a deep, roasted chile flavor that lasts and lasts without ever getting too hot.

This ancient technology is up-to-the-minute environmentally friendly.

The counterintuitive thing about sun dried foods is that, even when they’re shipped to us from the other side of the world, they can be more environmentally friendly than local foods that rely on more energy-intensive methods to create. Take salt, for example. To make salt here in Michigan we have to mine it with heavy machinery (that’s how the Kosher brand salt you see at grocery stores is made—it’s mined just north of Ann Arbor). To make it in foggy coastal places like Wales you have to boil it out of the sea water, which takes a tremendous amount of fossil fuel. But on the sunny Southern coast of Portugal or along France’s Brittany coast, salt can be harvested from shallow pools of sea water that evaporate in the sun. The salt is raked by hand and the only machine you’ll spot is a conveyor that piles it high for storage until it’s shipped to us.

The counter to the side of your stove. It’s where you keep the foods you need most often. The ones you grab every day. Your kitchen’s speed dial. Your food friends list.

Here’s a written snapshot of the space next to my stove.

So many salts

I’ve probably got too many salts. They all have a reason for existing but I’ll admit it, I’ve kind of got a problem. There’s coarse salt for boiling or braising. There’s fine salt for finishing a dish, usually the one I import from Portugal. And French fleur de sel for when the salt really has to shine. I’ve even got one flavored salt these days, from Tuscan butcher Dario Cecchini. It finds its way onto popcorn (frequently) and other dishes (sometimes).

Pofi wine vinegar

Most of the time I make my own salad dressing: vinegar + oil + Dijon + salt + pepper, takes about 2 minutes. I also use wine vinegar to deglaze a pan and make a little pan juice to drizzle on whatever I cooked. Pofi has been my go-to for years, the great barrel aged wine vinegar from near Rome.

Marash red pepper

The counter next to my stove hasn’t been without a jar of these red pepper flakes for 20 years. Sometimes I put them in the freezer (they keep more moist that way, I really should keep them there), but whatever, they sit here now, and God willing, they always will.

Olive oils

I’ll be honest, this is always a hodge podge on my counter. I am lucky enough to have lots of olive oil samples come my way. I always keep an oil that’s for finishing. Sometimes two. One spicy and green (right now I’ve got a tentacle bottle from Puglia that we sell in different one-of-a-kind handmade bottles each year), one mild and sweet (currently Alziari). For my cooking oil, I usually buy California Ranch from the grocery store.

Fennel Pollen

My partner Ari called fennel pollen “fairy dust for food lovers,” a couple decades ago when we first discovered it and that’s still the absolutely best way to describe it. I put this on dishes just to see what it’ll do. Usually it makes eyes light up.

Finds from traveling

I always pick up something that’s easy to bring home when I’m traveling. From recent trips abroad I have a jar of dried Portuguese pepper, what they call pimentao, from Lisbon, and some Greek oregano and za’atar from Athens. I use these like I do the fennel pollen: put them on a dish, see what happens. It’s a fun way to cook. When they’re gone I’ll seek something else on some other journey.

Red peppers, often called chiles or chilli peppers, are the fruits of small shrubs native to South America. They belong to the botanical genus Capsicum. Black peppercorns are dried berries that grow on vines. They’re native to southwest India and belong to the genus Piper. They are completely unrelated plants from opposite sides of the globe. How did they wind up with the same name?

Blame it on Spanish explorers. When they first tasted chilli (the Nahuatl word for capsicums), they associated the fiery pungency with the familiar piquancy of black pepper. Rather than use the local name or create an entirely new name, they called capsicums by their word for black pepper—pimiento.
When the name got translated into English, it stuck.

Unlike black pepper, which grows only in the tropics, red pepper can grow in temperate climates. That has made it one of the most widely used spices in cuisines around the world, from Mexico to Tunisia, Vietnam to Hungary.