Orhei’s traditional hot pepper jam offers a unique taste and cold-season benefits
Farmer Dumitru Lungu from the town of Orhei produces a uniquely flavored chili pepper jam, made through a traditional long-boiling process that preserves local flavors and provides health benefits during the cold season.
Dumitru Lungu makes jam using hot peppers grown in the Republic of Moldova, creating a "dense, creamy, and sweet" mixture. He explains that he only uses old cast-iron pots, having tried making it in a stainless-steel saucepan but finding that "the taste is still not the same."
To prepare the jam, the peppers are cleaned of seeds and boiled for between two and a half to four and a half hours, during which time "they lose around 30% of their original mass." Afterward, he adds a little sugar followed by "a little bee honey."
The farmer notes that the product has an initial sweet taste, followed by "a spicy aftertaste," making it suitable for a variety of dishes. "It combines with absolutely all kinds of meat, starting from chicken to pork, lamb, beef, cheeses, and red fish," says Dumitru Lungu.
He recommends consuming the jam during the cold season: "A teaspoon of jam (...) when it enters the body, it takes away the cold."
Approximately 15-20 kilograms of peppers yield a small amount of the final product, and a jar of hot pepper jam costs 100 lei.
The topic was discussed on the "Zi de Zi" show on Radio Moldova.
