Aleppo Pepper

Aleppo pepper - or pul biber in Turkish, halaby pepper in Arabic - is one of the great culinary chillies, defined as much by its processing as its variety. The peppers are sun-dried, deseeded, and coarsely crushed into a deep red flake with oil-rich texture and a slow, gentle heat. The flavour is unmistakable: fruity, slightly tangy, with a dried-fruit complexity reminiscent of sun-dried tomatoes. Increasingly mainstream in UK supermarkets.

History & lineage

The Aleppo pepper takes its name from the Syrian city of Aleppo, one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities and historically the heart of Syrian agriculture and trade. The pepper has been grown across northern Syria, southern Turkey, and adjacent regions for centuries, with sun-dried and crushed pul biber forming a foundational seasoning of Levantine cuisine since at least the Ottoman period.

The Syrian civil war that began in 2011 devastated the original Aleppo pepper industry. Cultivation collapsed, processing facilities were destroyed, and refugee displacement scattered the growing community across Turkey, Lebanon, and beyond. For several years, "Aleppo pepper" sold internationally was almost entirely Turkish-grown pul biber - the Turkish version of the same variety, processed similarly but with subtle regional differences. As of 2026, Syrian production has partially recovered but remains a fraction of pre-war levels.

The pepper's rise to international prominence is recent. American food writer Paula Wolfert was an early champion in the 1990s and 2000s, introducing Aleppo to American restaurant kitchens through her Mediterranean cookbooks. Subsequent uptake by chefs like Yotam Ottolenghi, whose work has made Levantine ingredients mainstream in UK and US home cooking, accelerated the pepper's spread to Western supermarkets through the 2010s.

In its native cuisine, Aleppo (or pul biber) plays the role that black pepper plays in Western cooking - the universal seasoning sprinkled on virtually every dish. The flavour profile is distinctive: gently warm rather than spicy, with the fruity acidity that makes it function more like a finishing salt than a chilli. The salt-and-oil treatment during processing is crucial - dry crushed Aleppo without the traditional salt-oil cure has a different, less complex character.

Then the war took it. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization assessed that around $550 million of crops were destroyed in and around Aleppo every year between 2011 and 2016, and a US ban on direct Syrian imports has been in place since 2011. The result is a spice that mostly no longer comes from the place it is named after. Production shifted north across the Turkish border, and much of what is now sold as Aleppo pepper is Turkish-grown — sometimes Maraş pepper relabelled — or grown in the United States from seed carried out by the diaspora.

Sellers have been fairly open about it. One American importer described discovering that a batch bought as Aleppo pepper was Korean pepper substituted to cover a shortfall. A well-known chef kept the Aleppo name on a Turkish-grown pepper for the plainest of reasons: people recognise Aleppo and nobody knows what Maraş is. Treat the name as a style rather than an origin, in the way that most "Parmesan" isn't from Parma.

The distinction from its Turkish neighbours is really a distinction of processing. Aleppo is sun-dried, deseeded and lightly oiled, giving a bright red, dry, fruity flake. Urfa biber from the same region goes through an extra step — dried in the sun by day, then wrapped to sweat overnight for about a week — which ferments the sugars and produces a moist, almost black flake tasting of raisin and tobacco. Maraş sits between them: sun-dried and red like Aleppo, a shade smokier.

Culinary uses

A finishing flake rather than a cooking chilli. Scattered over hummus, labneh, roasted vegetables, eggs and grilled meat at the point of serving, where the fruit and the mild acidity come through before the heat does. It carries enough oil to bloom properly in warm butter or olive oil, which is worth doing before it goes on a dish. In Turkish cooking, pul biber of this type is reportedly the third most used spice after salt and black pepper. Where a recipe calls for it and you have none, Maraş is much the closest thing; ordinary chilli flakes are hotter, sharper and miss the point.

Growing it in the UK

Annuum is the forgiving group, and the right place to start. Seed germinates readily in warmth, the season is short enough to finish outdoors in a good summer, and February to early March is soon enough to sow. Germination is given as 10-14 days. 80 days to maturity is an ordinary season here — sow in February and it will ripen without a fight.

At 60–90 cm this is a substantial plant. Give it a 10-litre pot or a greenhouse border, and stake it before the fruit sets rather than after. Yield is moderate, so a single plant is a taste and two or three are a supply.

Read from this variety's own record — the figures are in the panel opposite.