Clic Brand Red Pepper Paste | Sybaritica

I happened to spy this product on the grocery store shelves while I was looking for something else and I decided to give it a try.  I tend not buy many middle-eastern food products as I don’t have a lot of experience with the cuisine of that region, either cooking it, or eating it. However, of late there has been a distinct dearth of fresh red chilies on our market shelves so I have been unable to make any homemade paste myself. This one looked interesting and it struck me that it might be useful to have in my fridge…

What appealed to me about this product was that it doesn’t contain any ingredients other than red peppers and salt and so it ought to be fairly versatile.

Appearance and Taste

The paste has a very nice color to it and has the same basic consistency as a thick tomato sauce. The label states that it contains seeds but these were nowhere apparent when I opened the jar so, possibly, they have been blended to a paste along with the flesh.

On opening the jar, the aroma doesn’t have any spiciness to it and, again like the consistency, was more like a tomato puree than a chili paste. To be honest, both before and immediately after opening the jar, I was a little afraid that this might just be made from sweet capsicums as the word ‘chili’ is nowhere mentioned on the label. The picture seems to show chili peppers but there are long thin varieties of the sweet kind as well as the more common bell peppers so I was still a little uncertain.

Luckily, on tasting the product, I was rewarded with a nice spicy heat. The chilies used are clearly not one of the hotter varieties, but the paste still has a nice, pleasant warmth somewhere on the level of a Jalapeno. As with the aroma, there is a definite tomato quality to the flavor but this is actually quite nice. The acidity is not overpowering, as is the case with quite a few commercial chili products, and I think it may arise from lactic acid due to a slight fermentation. There is a bit of bitterness lurking somewhere in the background, but not enough to spoil the overall effect.

The Verdict

I’m glad I gave this paste a try. On the whole, I prefer making my own chili pastes from scratch, but this may be a useful product to have on hand. Indeed, if the fresh chili situation around here doesn’t pick up soon I may end up having to use this paste for a couple of projects I have in mind. Either way, I’ll keep you posted on any experiments I undertake using it…

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