Guindilla Roja
Guindilla Roja is a mild, slender Spanish chili from the Basque Country that ripens from green to bright red. It is prized for pickling, frying with garlic, and drying into mild flakes used throughout Basque and Spanish cuisine.
Growing
~80 days to maturity
Fruit size
4–12 cm
Flavor & Use
Bright and slightly sweet with grassy notes and a mild, pleasant heat that builds slowly; when pickled the flavor becomes crisp, tangy and tart from the wine-vinegar brine.
Culinary
About
Guindilla Roja is a long, slender Capsicum annuum chili from Spain’s Basque Country. The thin-walled pods measure roughly 4–10 cm, start pale green and ripen to a bright red. With a mild heat of 1,000–2,000 Scoville Heat Units they deliver a bright, slightly sweet flavor with grassy notes. In the green stage they are classically pickled in white-wine vinegar as piparras for pintxos; the ripe red fruit is fried with garlic, dried for mild flakes or used fresh. Plants are bushy, about 60–70 cm tall, and reach maturity in approximately 80 days under full sun.
Backstory
The Guindilla Roja is the mature red form of the traditional Guindilla pepper long cultivated in Spain’s Basque Country. Immature green pods are pickled as piparras (Guindilla de Ibarra / Ibarrako Piparrak carries the Eusko Label quality mark in Gipuzkoa), while the ripe red pods are fried with garlic in olive oil for tapas, dried for mild flakes used in dishes such as bacalao al pil-pil, or added to stews and sauces. The pepper is central to Basque pintxo culture, most famously in the Gilda skewer of guindilla, salt-cured anchovy and green olive.
Appearance
Growing
Heritage
We don't have a documented family for this pepper yet.