Padrón Chilli

Why I grow it

If you love Spanish food, you need this one.

Padrón chillies are one of those plants where the reason for growing them is wonderfully simple: pick them small and green, blister them in a hot pan with good olive oil, throw over plenty of coarse salt and eat them immediately.

Mega yum. No further justification required.

At a glance

Type: Spanish frying chilli
Heat: Usually mild — occasionally surprisingly not
Fruit: Small, green and slightly wrinkled, ripening to red
Position: Full sun, warm and sheltered
Growth: Compact and bushy
Best for: Picking young and frying whole

That variable heat is genuinely characteristic of Padrón rather than horticultural folklore. RHS

In the kitchen

For us, there's really only one reason these exist.

Our Padrón Peppers

Pick the chillies while they're still small and green.

Get a heavy frying pan really hot, add a generous splash of good olive oil and throw in the whole Padróns. Cook them quickly until the skins blister, char slightly and begin to collapse.

Tip them onto a plate, scatter generously with coarse sea salt and eat immediately — holding the stalk and eating the rest.

That's it.

The classic high-heat, blister-and-salt treatment is also how they're commonly served as a Spanish tapas dish. Good Food

And every now and then you'll get the hot bastard. That's part of the fun.

In the garden

Padrón forms a relatively compact plant and produces lots of small green peppers. Pick them regularly while they're young rather than waiting for them all to mature — that's when they're traditionally eaten and generally at their mildest. Left on the plant, the fruit gets larger and eventually ripens red.

What you'll receive

One healthy, established seedling grown here at A Garden Between. Plants naturally vary in size and shape and may be supplied in reused nursery pots or growing bags — perfectly useful plastic doesn't need replacing simply because it doesn't match.