Pimientos Verdes Fritos are long green frying peppers (pimientos de freír) from Andalusia, fried whole in abundant olive oil until wilted, blistered, and sweet. Eaten with flaked salt, they are the simplest, most delicious vegetable dish of southern Spain — the Andalusian answer to Padrón peppers, but without the heat.
Pimientos Verdes Fritos are a staple of Andalusian home cooking, especially around Seville and Cádiz. The peppers used are a specific long, thin, mild green variety bred for frying (pimientos de freír), distinct from bell peppers and from Padron peppers. In Andalusia, where olive oil is abundant and cheap, vegetables are fried in it rather than steamed or boiled. This dish is on every family table all summer.
A pile of wilted, glossy green peppers, blistered and browned in patches. The flesh has collapsed into sweetness; the skin peels off in strips. Flaked salt crunches. Eat them whole, dragging through the peppery frying oil with bread. They are all sweetness, no heat.
The peppers must be fried in abundant olive oil (not just coated) — they are more shallow-fried than sautéed. The oil must be hot enough that the skin blisters immediately, but not so hot that the peppers burn before collapsing. The long frying softens the flesh completely and concentrates the natural sugars. The frying oil, flavored with pepper, is kept and used for other dishes.
Variations
Some add slivers of garlic at the end; some finish with a splash of sherry vinegar; the pepper type is always the long frying green variety.
On the Palate
Where Pimientos Verdes Fritos sits in the Spanish flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4How it's made
7 steps · 15 min active + 5 min waiting
- 12 min
Wash and dry long green frying peppers; leave them whole with stems.
- 23 min
Heat abundant olive oil (about 1 cm deep) in a wide pan until shimmering.
Watch outHeat the oil until it shimmers and a pepper tip sizzles on contact — too cool and the skins go limp and oily instead of blistering.
- 31 min
Add peppers in a single layer; do not crowd (fry in batches if needed).
- 410 min
Fry undisturbed 3 minutes, then toss, until skins blister and brown in patches and flesh collapses, 8-10 minutes total.
Watch outYou want blistered brown patches and flesh gone fully limp — that collapse is the sign the sugars have concentrated and it's sweet through.
- 52 min
Transfer to a paper-lined plate; drain.
- 61 min
Sprinkle with coarse salt.
- 71 min
Serve at once with bread for the oil.
