From Choricero to Chorizo: The Rare Pepper that Makes Traditional Basque Sausage Sing

Basque chorizo comes in many juicy forms—long and thin, short and fat, studded with garlic or packed with paprika—but the sausage’s defining ingredient, the thing that makes it truly and uniquely Basque, is the choricero pepper.

When it’s very young, the mild green pepper is sometimes blistered in a hot pan and dusted with sea salt. More often, it’s allowed to ripen on the vine to a brilliant red and strung up to dry in long, spiky clusters. As winter settles in, the peppers shrivel into wrinkled, deep burgundy shells that conceal dozens of rattling seeds.

Choricero pepper seeds are a kind of currency in Idaho’s Basque community—if you want to get your hands on top-notch seeds, you’ve got to get in good with a seed saver or a seed smuggler.

“Like everything in choriceros, I knew somebody that knew somebody that knew somebody to get the ‘good seed,’” said Phil Sarasqueta, a Basque choricero grower in Twin Falls.

The choricero peppers grown in Idaho today are descendants of seeds that were once tucked into someone’s coat pocket or stashed in their suitcase on their way over from the Basque country.

“It’s not exactly like we’re trying to sneak in cocaine,” Sarasqueta added with a laugh. “But you know.”

Sarasqueta, a self-proclaimed “newbie” in the choricero-growing scene, has planted around 250 peppers for the last three years. He sows two peppers side-by-side per row, and spaces them exactly a foot apart. Each row is approximately 40 inches away from the next and the plants are watered on a drip irrigation system.

Though these details might seem like gardening minutiae, each factor is a hotly debated subject at Basque bars. After a little wine, the choricero can become an inexhaustible topic of conversation. After a lot of wine, the conversation often dissolves into straight-up bragging, with gardeners boasting that their peppers are bigger, better or more abundant than everyone else’s.

Edwards Greenhouse owner Garnette Edwards has been involved with the plucky Basque pepper-growing community for the last 25 to 30 years.

“My father actually met a lot of these Basque people back in the day when he and his father delivered in the mid to late 1930s to the Basque boarding houses,” said Edwards.

What began with one Basque woman starting her seeds at the greenhouse blossomed to include 20 or more families. Now, every year at the end of February, Basque pepper growers bring their saved seeds to be started at Edwards, some requesting multiple flats. They pick up their starts at the end of May, when they’re around six inches long and ready to be planted.

“They’re kind of secretive and competitive about their peppers,” said Edwards’ daughter, Production Manager Erin Monnie. “They’re always coming in and making sure their peppers are better than the other guys’ peppers. It’s a friendly competition, but it’s really fun. They’re some of my favorite customers.”

Instead of labelling the young choricero starts with their owners’ names, Edwards had to establish a special coding system to prevent pepper fraud.

“We started numbering them because somebody would be, like, ‘It’s OK, I know that person; I can take those,’” said Monnie. “And then that person would come in later and be, like, ‘Oh, I didn’t say that.’ So we had to code them.”

But there’s another code that can work against Basque pepper seeds: genetics. After a few generations, the seedstock tends to slowly evolve due to cross-pollination.

“Over time, a line of peppers kind of deteriorates,” said Sarasqueta. “You save the seeds, grow the peppers, save the seeds, grow the peppers, save the seeds. Unless you’re very, very careful on only picking the very best peppers as your seed peppers … your peppers just aren’t quite as good after several years.”

Many Basque gardeners also plant other old-country pepper varieties, including piquillo, espelette, morrón and gernika—which are often confused with choricero, but have a more pointed tip and are primarily pan-fried and eaten green.

“Most of these fellows grow pimentos and fry peppers so it’ll have some of those characteristics melded together. Or you won’t get a big production out of them, or there will be a glitch,” said Edwards. “Then it’s time to go back to the Basque country and get more seed.”