Portugal

Hot peppers are deeply integrated into Portugal’s culinary identity, even though the national palate leans more toward fragrant warmth than extreme burn.

Portuguese cooks use a mix of sweet and moderately hot red peppers to create pantry staples like pimenta moída (salt-fermented ground hot red pepper) and massa de pimentão, a rich red pepper paste that seasons everything from pork marinades to bean stews.

Piri-piri (peri-peri) chilies, originally connected to Portugal’s colonial networks with Africa, are now essential for iconic dishes like frango piri-piri, as well as seafood, grilled prawns, and simple olive oil–garlic sauces. In everyday cooking, these pastes and sauces provide layered, fruity heat rather than pure fire, brushed onto grilled meats, stirred into soups, or used as a base for sautés. This approach makes hot peppers a defining, versatile backbone of modern Portuguese flavour.

Portugal’s chili pepper market has seen a compound annual growth rate of nearly 17% over the past four years, supported by rising consumer interest in spicy foods and consistent imports from Spain, Morocco, and the Netherlands.

Climatic instability and price volatility are challenges, but government research and farmer networks sustain the sector’s competitiveness.