Pantry · Chiles

Piri-piri

A tiny chile that crossed the Atlantic twice: New World plant, African name, Portuguese table.

Capsicum frutescens — the small African bird chile of Portuguese kitchens · Also called pili-pili, peri-peri, African bird's eye · From The African coast, then Portugal by the same ships that carried the pepper the other way

Small red piri-piri chiles, dried and bright, in a clay bowl.

The journey

Capsicum left the Americas with the Portuguese and found a second home in Africa. Piri-piri — from a word for pepper used along the Swahili and Central African coasts — became the heat of grilled chicken, seafood, and a bottle on the table in Lisbon and Luanda alike.

In the series it is Portuguese and Ethiopian: 21 recipes. Ethiopia has its own chile culture; the books also catch the Portuguese bird chile that went to Africa and came home as a sauce. The plant is small. The history is not.

Public-domain 1828 plate of Caribbean and Mozambique peppers, kin to piri-piri. — M. E. Descourtilz, Flore médicale des Antilles (1828) · Public domain. Source

In the kitchen

Fresh or dried, it is sharp and clean. For a sauce, blend with garlic, lemon, oil, and bay. For a stew, a few pods in the pot are enough.

Store-bought peri-peri sauce is a cousin. Taste it. If it is only vinegar and red color, make your own.

Healers and the table

African and Portuguese home kitchens used small hot chiles the way other houses used pepper: to wake a dull appetite and to keep food from tasting tired.

A dash on grilled chicken is supper. It is not medical advice.

Traditional uses are part of the story of this spice. They are not medical advice.

Used in these ComidaTime kitchens

Find Piri-piri on Amazon