Massa de pimentão
Also known as Portuguese red pepper paste, Portuguese pepper paste, massa de pimentao, massa de Catalão, calda de pimentão
Paste
Quick answer
The red pepper paste of the Alentejo in southern Portugal: ripe sweet peppers, seeded, cured for days between layers of coarse salt, then ground, skins and all, and kept in jars under olive oil. It is very salty and is used as a seasoning, above all in the region’s cured pork sausages and rubbed on pork the day before it is cooked.
In essentially every version: Ripe red sweet pepper, fresh, Coarse 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 stalks and seeds removed, not the dried spice. The inventory says the varieties usually used are Bola and Catalão. | base | defining |
| SaltThe peppers are cured in it; it is what preserves the paste. | salt | defining |
The sources read describe two things under the name. The inventory describes a paste made by a family producer: strips of pepper cured in layers of coarse salt in an earthenware vessel, drained, washed, ground with their skins and bottled under olive oil. It says this differs from industrial pastes in two ways, that the skin stays in and that the pepper is not fermented. The paste a food-science paper sampled in two sausage factories was acid, at pH 3.4 to 3.9, and the authors connect the yeasts they counted in one factory’s paste with a fermentation of the pepper. Neither source gives a recipe with amounts.
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.
Salt-cured paste, as the inventory of traditional products describes it
Regional traditionThe entry for massa de pimentão in Produtos Tradicionais Portugueses, compiled by Portugal’s agriculture ministry from a producer in the Alentejo · no amounts given · medium confidence
Well-ripened red peppers are washed, opened lengthwise, cleaned of stalks and seeds and cut into strips. The strips go into an earthenware vessel in alternate layers with coarse salt and stay there for several days, a step called curtimento. They are then drained, washed and drained again, ground, and put into glass jars with a layer of olive oil over the surface. The peppers are processed straight after picking, between September and December.
Made with: Ripe red pepper of the Bola or Catalão kind, fresh, Coarse salt. The source gives no amounts, so none are shown.
One producer’s method as an official inventory recorded it in 2001. It says the cure lasts several days and does not say how many, or how much salt.
Paste as used in two Alentejo sausage factories
Typical commercialSix samples from each of two factories making paio de porco Alentejano, analysed at the University of Évora and published in 2007 · no amounts given · medium confidence
The paste the two factories worked into their sausage meat. It was acid, with a mean pH of 3.85 in one factory and 3.37 in the other, held 68 to 69 per cent moisture, and had a water activity of 0.77. The paper prints its chloride content as 29.1 per cent, expressed as salt. The authors found yeasts in one factory’s paste and suggest they come from a fermentation of the pepper.
Made with: Red pepper, as paste, Salt. The source gives no amounts, so none are shown.
Measurements of what two factories were using, not a description of how it was made; the paper does not say. The salt figure is given as printed and the paper does not state whether it is of the whole paste or of its dry matter.
Using it
Put on raw meat, ahead of time. For migas à alentejana the pork is seasoned the day before by spreading it with crushed garlic and the paste, and fried the next day. For Paio de Beja the cut meat and fat are mixed with salt, the paste, crushed dried garlic, cumin, paprika and pepper and left for one to two days before the casings are filled. Because the paste is itself heavily salted, it brings salt as well as pepper.
No source read gives an amount of paste.
Salted ripe red pepper. The sources read describe its colour, a red paste, and credit it with part of the taste of the region’s sausages; none describes the taste of the paste itself, and no tasting panel was found.
None. It is made from sweet peppers, which the Alentejo calls garden peppers to tell them from the hot ones.
- Migas à alentejana, for the pork that is fried to go with the bread
- Paio de Beja, a smoked sausage of Alentejano pork
- Paio de porco Alentejano
Three uses named in the sources read. The inventory says it seasons the pork dishes of the region generally and names no others in the entry for the paste.
What to use it on
Pork
StrongPork is what the paste is for. Portugal’s inventory of traditional products says its commonest use is in the cured sausages of the Alentejo and its other use the seasoning of the region’s pork dishes; for migas à alentejana the pork is spread with crushed garlic and the paste the day before it is fried.
How: Migas à alentejana; Paio de Beja; Paio de porco Alentejano
Massa de pimentão 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
The Alentejo, the region to which Portugal’s inventory of traditional products assigns it. The inventory says households made it to season the meat of the yearly pig-killing and calls the practice centuries old, on the word of a producer whose family had made it for three generations. No dated source was read.
The Alentejo
The Alentejo, Portugal.
Portugal’s inventory of traditional products records the paste as a seasoning households made for the meat of the matança, the yearly killing of the pig, and says the taste of the region’s cured sausages is owed in part to it. The peppers that go into it are called pimentos da horta or pimentões da horta, garden peppers, to tell them from the hot ones, which are called queime or malagueta. It is made in the autumn, from September to December, as the peppers are picked.
Also documented in the Alentejo: Coriander leaf.