Fefil Salçası: The Kurdish Red Pepper Paste and the Rooftops of Amed

Mehmet Özdemir
May 31
6 min read

Fefil Salçası: The Kurdish Red Pepper Paste and the Rooftops of Amed

Every August in Diyarbakır — Amed, the volcanic city of the Kurdish southeast — the rooftops fill with red. Flat-roofed houses spread wide cloth trays of crushed red pepper in the summer sun, and for six to seven days the city’s architecture becomes its kitchen: the same sun that bakes the black basalt walls draws the moisture from the pepper, concentrating its sweetness and heat into a thick, brilliant paste that will last through the winter and go into a hundred dishes. This is fefil salçası — the Kurdish red pepper paste — and it is as fundamental to the Bakur kitchen as the nan, the somaq, and the izot. This series gave the dark dried pepper of the Kurdish kitchen its own article: izot, the sun-cured Urfa pepper that is smoky and raisin-dark and complex, the slow-burning flavour note of winter cooking. Fefil salçası is izot’s opposite. Where izot is dark, salçası is brilliant red. Where izot is whole and dried, salçası is crushed and paste. Where izot carries depth and smoke, salçası carries brightness and body. It goes into the meftûne as the base that the eggplant and sumac build on; it goes into the kebab marinade as the colour and the sweetness; it goes onto the morning bread as a spread; it goes into the egg pan as an instant sauce. Without it, a great portion of the Bakur kitchen loses its foundational flavour. This is the one-hundred-and-thirty-ninth article in the series. Izot was article one-hundred-and-twenty-nine. Now its companion gets its own piece.

Key Takeaways

• Fefil salçası is the Kurdish red pepper paste — sun-dried for six to seven days and used in virtually every Bakur dish

• Made on the rooftops of Amed each August — crushed peppers spread on cloth in the volcanic sun for days

• The bright red companion to izot — together they form the full pepper vocabulary of the Kurdish Bakur kitchen

• Essential in meftûne, kebab marinades, morning bread, and as a base for countless Bakur stews and dishes

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Fefil salçası (pepper paste); also kırmızı biber salçası; sweet (tatlı) or hot (acı) varieties

Made From: Fresh red peppers; stems and seeds removed, crushed with salt, sun-dried six to seven days

Tradition: Made on the rooftops and courtyards of Amed each August; stirred daily; stored in jars under olive oil

Used In: Meftûne, kebabs, stews, as a spread, stirred into eggs; the foundational red condiment of the Bakur kitchen

Six Days on the Rooftop

Making fefil salçası at home is a summer event. Fresh red peppers — the long sweet red variety, or the medium-hot, or a mix — are washed, halved, and de-stemmed. Seeds are removed. The peppers are run through a meat grinder or food processor until crushed to a rough purée, not completely smooth but broken down enough to release the juice. Salt goes in, mixed thoroughly, and then the mixture is spread in a shallow layer on a large cloth or tray. On the rooftop, in the courtyard, wherever the August sun hits hardest and longest, the tray goes out each morning and comes in each evening. For six to seven days, the sun draws the moisture out of the pepper. Each day, the paste is stirred, turned, aerated, the evaporation encouraged. The colour deepens from bright red to a richer, darker burgundy. The texture changes from wet and rough to stiff and paste-like, concentrated, intense. After a week, the paste is scooped into jars, packed tight, and a layer of olive oil poured over the surface to seal it from the air. Stored in a cool place, it lasts through the winter. Two varieties are common: tatlı — sweet pepper paste, mild and aromatic, for volume and colour — and acı — hot pepper paste, chilli-forward, for heat. A Bakur cook keeps both, using the tatlı as a base and the acı to calibrate the heat of each dish to taste.

The Two Peppers of Bakur

This series has now covered the full pepper vocabulary of the Kurdish Bakur kitchen. Article one-hundred-and-twenty-nine was izot: the dark, smoky, sun-cured dried whole pepper of Şanlıurfa, preserved entire, ground to a dark oily flake, added in small amounts as a deepening spice. It is the dark pole of the Bakur kitchen’s pepper tradition. Fefil salçası is the bright pole: brilliant red, made from whole fresh peppers crushed and sun-dried into a paste, used in large amounts as a body-and-colour ingredient rather than a finishing spice. The two together describe how the Bakur kitchen uses pepper: izot for depth and complexity and the smoky bottom note of a dish; fefil salçası for volume and body and the bright red that makes the meftûne look like what it is — a dish that the sun made. In the meftûne, the Amed eggplant stew, a spoonful of fefil salçası goes in early as part of the spice base, giving the stew its colour and its sweetness as the eggplant cooks down around it. In the kebab marinade at the mangal, fefil salçası is one of the core ingredients, coating the lamb and browning on the grill into a caramelised crust. In the morning, spread on bread and eaten with white cheese and a glass of tea, it is as natural as butter. The honest note: biber salçası is made and used across all of Anatolia and is not uniquely Kurdish. But the tradition of making it at home on Amed’s rooftops in August, the specific pride in the home-made paste over the industrial jar, and its centrality to the Kurdish Bakur kitchen as a whole — these are Kurdish.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is fefil salçası?

Fefil salçası (biber salçası in Turkish) is the Kurdish red pepper paste: fresh red peppers crushed with salt and sun-dried for six to seven days until they reduce to a thick, brilliantly red, aromatic paste. Made each August in Amed and across Bakur, stored in jars under olive oil, it is the foundational red condiment of the Kurdish Bakur kitchen — used in stews, kebabs, as a spread, and as a colour and flavour base for countless dishes.

How does fefil salçası differ from izot?

Izot is a whole dried chili pepper (Urfa isot pepper) sun-cured and sweated until dark burgundy-black, then ground into a spice flake. It is used in small amounts as a finishing and deepening spice — added for smokiness and complexity. Fefil salçası is a paste made from fresh red peppers, crushed and sun-dried — brilliant red, sweet or moderately hot, used in large amounts as a body-and-colour base ingredient. Izot is deep and dark; fefil salçası is bright and red. Together they form the full pepper vocabulary of the Bakur Kurdish kitchen.

Why is fefil salçası made on rooftops?

The Diyarbakır / Amed tradition of sun-drying food on flat rooftops is part of the city’s broader summer preservation culture: peppers, aubergines, courgettes, tomatoes are all dried on the rooftop in August. The rooftop provides the maximum surface area and the maximum sun exposure, with good air circulation for even drying. The flat-roofed architecture of the Kurdish southeast is literally designed for this function. The Amed summer is hot and dry enough to reduce the pepper paste in six to seven days — a process that would take longer in a cooler or more humid climate.

Conclusion

Fefil salçası is the one-hundred-and-thirty-ninth article in the series, and the one that completes the Bakur pepper picture. Izot covered the dark end — the winter spice, smoky and deep. Fefil salçası covers the bright end — the summer paste, red and concentrated, made from the fresh pepper that the Amed August sun turns into something that will last through January. Two peppers. Two processes. Two poles of the same Bakur flavour vocabulary. One hundred and thirty-nine articles in, every spice in the Kurdish Bakur kitchen has been named.