Pimientos de Padrón
Small green Galician peppers fried whole in olive oil and scattered with coarse salt — most are mild, but the occasional one bites, which is the game.
Pimientos de Padrón are small green peppers from the Galician town of Padrón, blistered whole in hot olive oil and finished with a pinch of coarse sea salt. The local saying — os pementos de Padrón, uns pican e outros non ('some are hot and some are not') — is the whole appeal: most are sweet and mild, but every plateful hides one or two that flare with heat, so eating them is a small game of chance. They are a fixture of tapas bars across Spain.
How it's served
Straight from the pan, glistening in oil and coarse salt, as a tapa or a side to share.
- Origin
- Padrón, Galicia, Spain
- Etymology
- Named for Padrón, the town in A Coruña, Galicia, where the peppers were first grown.
Frequently asked
Are Padrón peppers spicy?
Mostly no. The great majority are mild and sweet, but a small, unpredictable few are genuinely hot — that roulette is the point. Heat tends to rise later in the season.
Where are Padrón peppers from?
From Padrón in Galicia, north-west Spain. The best carry a protected-origin label, though the peppers are now grown and served all over the country.