Urfa’s Sweet Heat

In early September, the air over Şanlıurfa’s isot pepper farms shimmers with heat. Irrigated by canals that carry water from the dammed Euphrates River, the fields form an enormous expanse of emerald dappled with scarlet, a sharp contrast to parched peanut-colored hills in the distance.

It was hot as a furnace when I met Kurdish farmer Abdullah Karadas early one September morning on the farm where he grows the peppers for landowners in Şanlıurfa city. As we walked through the field of waist-high plants, he told me that the harvest was nearly over. “That’s why the peppers are so small,” he said. Six inches long and as big around as a pepper mill, they don’t look small to me. But in July, at the start of the harvest, the capsicums can be ten inches and more.

Abdullah and his family dry the peppers to make the beguilingly sweet-spicy dried chile flakes known outside Turkey as Urfa pepper. At his family’s “pepper season” house at the edge of the farm, he pointed to trays of peppers on the flat roof. Then he showed me his dried chiles: deeply wrinkled, ranging in color from deep red-purple to almost black, smelling of chocolate, raisins, and molasses. The peppers were supple, a texture achieved by alternating days under the sun with nights “sweating” them beneath plastic tarps. Abdullah dries his peppers for at least two days, and up to seven. The peppers’ Scoville level lessens with exposure to heat, so darker peppers are sweeter and less spicy. He pulled out his stash of ground two-day Urfa pepper: It was more orange than red, and on my tongue, it delivered a jolt of fire, a hint of fruity acidity, and none of the sweetness I usually associate with Urfa pepper. A tub of aromatic wine-colored Urfa pepper paste was oily and chunky, with a chocolaty, spicy sweetness that recalled a Oaxacan mole.

Abdullah threw a big sack of whole dried peppers into the trunk of our car. Then we were off to the nearby pepper-processing village of Şirin. “Chiles Cleaned, Dried Peppers and Pepper Paste Sold” announced the sign that hung above two grinders and a mechanized sifter out front of Abdullah’s processor. The air was sharp with the scent of chile peppers. Each batch is custom-ground in a three-step process: first a rough grind with a small amount of olive oil into large flakes, then sifting to remove seeds, and, finally, a second finer grind—with or without salt and additional olive oil, as per the customer’s preference. Fifty-five pounds of fresh Urfa peppers make twenty-two pounds of dried.