Biber salçası
Also known as Turkish pepper paste, Turkish red pepper paste, biber salcasi, Antep biber salçası, Hatay biber salçası
Paste
Quick answer
The red pepper paste of southern and south-eastern Türkiye: ripe red peppers, seeded, reduced by the sun or by boiling to a thick dark paste, and salted. It is cooked and kneaded into food as its pepper seasoning, sweet or hot, and most households in the one district surveyed still make their own.
In essentially every version: Ripe red pepper, fresh, Salt.
2 distinct versions are set out below. None of them is presented as the correct one, because there isn’t one.
What goes into it
What essentially every version is made from, with what each ingredient is there to do.
| Ingredient | Role | How essential |
|---|---|---|
| Paprika (fresh)Fresh ripe fruit of Capsicum annuum with seeds and stalks removed, not the dried spice. Hatay names the thick-fleshed sweet kapya pepper; Gaziantep asks for conical paste peppers grown in the province. | base | defining |
| SaltRock salt in the Gaziantep registration. The Hatay registration asks for salt or citric acid or both. | salt | usual |
Two things vary: how the water is taken out, and whether the paste is hot. In Hatay the cut peppers are dried in the sun for two to three days before they are minced, and the registration credits that drying with the paste’s dark colour and strong smell. In Gaziantep the peppers are crushed to a pulp and reduced under vacuum in a factory, and nothing is dried in the sun. The Hatay paste is thicker and saltier on its own figures. Hot pepper may be worked into the sweet. In Şanlıurfa, where the paste is made from the local isot pepper, a study describes a third way: at home the peppers are washed, cut up and minced first, and the mince is then left in the sun until it is thick enough, where the Hatay method dries the strips before mincing. The study says the paste ferments as it stands and credits that with a better smell and look; it reports this from an earlier work and did not measure it. A survey of households in one district of Osmaniye found that most made their own to suit their own taste, and it records no recipe.
The versions
Each attributed to whoever describes it. The sources say what goes in and how it is made and give no amounts, so none are shown.
Hatay biber salçası (registered description)
Regional traditionThe registration held by the Antakya Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the Turkish register of protected names, no. 1656 · no amounts given · high confidence
Kapya peppers grown in Hatay are washed, cut into strips and cored, and spread on cloths over a concrete floor in the sun for two to three days, turned at intervals, until they have lost about two thirds to three quarters of their water. They darken as they dry. They are then minced, salted, acidified with citric acid if needed, pasteurised and packed hot. The registration gives 36 to 47.4 per cent soluble solids and salt at 2.0 to 2.8 per cent of the dry matter.
Made with: Kapya pepper, fresh, sun-dried in strips, Salt. The source gives no amounts, so none are shown.
The rule for one protected name, written by the body that holds it. It allows hot pepper to be added and does not say which.
Antep biber salçası (registered description)
Typical commercialThe registration held by the Gaziantep Commodity Exchange in the Turkish register of protected names, no. 1222 · no amounts given · high confidence
A factory paste. Red peppers grown in Gaziantep province are burst between rollers, washed free of seeds and stalks, crushed to a pulp, heated and reduced under vacuum in two stages; rock salt is added, and lemon or lime juice may be used to adjust the acidity. The registration asks for at least 30 per cent soluble solids, salt at no more than 5 per cent of the dry matter and a pH of 4.1 to 4.9, and reckons 400 to 500 kg of fresh pepper to 100 kg of paste.
Made with: Red paste pepper, fresh, Rock salt, Lemon or lime juice, or its concentrate. The source gives no amounts, so none are shown.
The rule for one protected name. The amounts it prints are those of a 100 kg factory batch and are not turned into proportions here.
Using it
Worked into the food, not served beside it. In the registered bulgur salad of Hatay 125 g of pepper paste and half as much tomato paste are kneaded by hand into a kilogram of washed fine bulgur with onion and the spices, with no water added. In the Şanlıurfa study 120 g of home-made isot paste and 10 g of isot flakes went into the topping for 500 g of minced beef for lahmacun. Households in one district of Osmaniye used on average 12.4 kg a year each, and four in five used more pepper paste than tomato paste.
Concentrated ripe red pepper, salted. The Hatay registration describes its own paste as having a strong pepper smell from the sun-drying, a thick body and a dark colour, and says it no longer tastes like the fresh fruit. No tasting panel has described the paste itself.
Sweet or hot, as made. The kapya pepper of the Hatay paste is a sweet one; hot pepper is added for a hot paste.
- Hatay kısırı, a bulgur salad kneaded with pepper paste and tomato paste
- Lahmacun, in the meat topping, as made in Şanlıurfa
- Çiğ köfte, named with lahmacun as a dish that isot paste colours and flavours
Three dishes named in the sources read. The paste is used far more widely than this, and the wider use is not documented here.
Biber salçası compared
Direct comparisons with the blends and spices it is most often taken for.
Allergens and safety
Not among the substances that must be declared as allergens under EU Regulation 1169/2011 Annex II or under the United States major food allergen rules. That is a statement about labelling law and not about whether allergy occurs: allergic reactions to spices are documented in the clinical literature and are simply not a labelling category. Where a ground spice presents an allergen risk it is usually through adulteration or shared processing equipment rather than through the plant itself.
Culture and origin
Southern and south-eastern Türkiye. The two registered pastes are those of Gaziantep and Hatay provinces, and a study from Osmaniye says making pepper into paste is especially common in the south of the country. None of the sources read says when it began; the registrations say only that it has a long past.
Hatay
Hatay, Türkiye.
The paste is made in the last days of August and the first week of September, a spell the province calls biber sıcakları, the pepper heat, when the wind drops and the air is very dry. The registration says the peppers then dry quickly without going mouldy, and it ties the name to that season: every stage must take place in Hatay during it. It describes the knowledge as handed down through generations.
Bahçe district, Osmaniye
Bahçe district, Osmaniye, Türkiye.
Of 160 family members asked in the district centre in the autumn of 2021, 131 said their household made its own pepper paste and 29 bought it. Asked why they made it, most said it was cleaner and that they could make it to their own taste; fewer than a third gave cost as a reason. All of them ate pepper paste, and four in five ate more of it than of tomato paste.
A convenience sample in one town, nine in ten of them women.
Şanlıurfa
Şanlıurfa, Türkiye.
A study at Harran University says isot flakes and isot paste matter to the region’s lahmacun and çiğ köfte for their dark red colour and their aroma. It baked lahmacun with home-made flakes and paste and with factory-made ones, and gave both to 50 students to score. The home-made batch scored higher for taste, smell, look and texture. It is one batch of each, tasted by untrained students.