- Season
- Jars are sold all year. Fresh feferonky are on sale all year as imports, and the Czech garden and field harvest runs from late summer into autumn (roughly August to October).
- Price
- Low
- Nutrition per 100 g
- 22 kcal
- 0.8 g protein
- 0.4 g fat
- 4.6 g carbs
Pickled Peppers
Vegetables
Pickled Peppers
Feferonky are small, hot chilli peppers. Czech shoppers mostly buy them pickled in jars, in a sweet-sour vinegar brine, and less often fresh from the vegetable shelf.
In practice
How to store
- On the counter
Keep unopened jars in a cool, dark cupboard until the best-before date. Fresh peppers last only a day or two at room temperature.
- In the fridge
Once a jar is open, keep it closed in the fridge, keep the peppers covered by the brine, and take them out with a clean fork. Use them within the time given on the label, which is often only a few days. Fresh feferonky keep for about one to two weeks in a paper bag or open container in the vegetable drawer.
- In the freezer
Fresh feferonky freeze well whole or chopped, without blanching, for several months. They soften once thawed, so use them for cooking rather than raw. Freezing pickled peppers is not recommended, because they lose their crispness.
How to choose
With jars, read the label before anything else. Czech producers state the heat ("jemně pálivé", "pálivé", "ostře pálivé" or "extra pálivé"). The label also gives the drained weight ("pevný podíl"), which tells you how much pepper you get compared with brine, and the brine ingredients: vinegar, sugar, salt, and sometimes sweeteners such as saccharin, preservatives such as sodium benzoate, or calcium chloride for crispness. Look for whole, evenly coloured peppers in clear brine. Do not buy a jar with a bulging or damaged lid. Fresh feferonky should be firm, glossy and smooth, with a green, fresh stalk. Avoid soft, wrinkled or spotted pods. In general, smaller and thinner peppers tend to be hotter, but this is not a reliable rule.
What to swap in
Best swap
Other pickled hot peppers, such as feferony šipky, round pickled cherry peppers or pickled Hungarian wax-type peppers. Choose a heat level that matches the original.
In a pinch
Fresh chilli with a splash of vinegar and a pinch of sugar, or chilli flakes or hot paprika in cooked dishes. Adjust the amount to taste, as these do not give the same crisp texture.
Preparation
Jarred feferonky are ready to eat. Drain them, and slice or chop them as needed. Remove the stalk if you are chopping them into a dish. For fresh peppers, rinse them, cut off the stalk and slice them. Leave the seeds and white ribs in if you want more heat, or scrape them out for less. Capsaicin irritates skin and eyes. Wear gloves or wash your hands thoroughly after handling, and do not touch your eyes or contact lenses. If you are pickling at home, use clean, sterilised jars and follow a tested recipe for brine acidity and processing time.
Don't toss it
Don't pour away the brine. A spoonful adds sour heat to salad dressings, goulash, bean soups, potato salad or a marinade for sausages, and it can be used to pickle sliced onion. Fresh peppers that are starting to wrinkle can be dried on a string, chopped and frozen, or blended with salt and oil into a simple hot paste.
In the kitchen
Cooking
In Czechia, jarred feferonky are mostly eaten cold. They are served next to grilled or boiled sausages, cold cuts and open sandwiches, on platters with beer, chopped into cheese and meat spreads, and on pizza and topinky (fried bread). They also go into cooked dishes such as goulash, lečo, chilli con carne and bean dishes, usually added towards the end so they keep some bite. Larger round feferonky are sometimes stuffed with cheese. Fresh feferonky are sliced into salads, sautéed with onion as a base for stews and sauces, grilled whole, or pickled and sterilised at home in a vinegar, sugar and salt brine with mustard seed, allspice, garlic or bay leaf.
Goes well with
- Buřty And Špekáčky
- Utopenci
- Pivní Sýr And Hermelín
- Guláš
- Lečo
- Pizza
- Bramborový Salát
- Onion
- Garlic
- Smoked Meats
- Cheese Spreads
- Fried Eggs
What it is
Feferonky are small, hot chilli peppers. Czech shoppers mostly buy them pickled in jars, in a sweet-sour vinegar brine, and less often fresh from the vegetable shelf. In everyday Czech the word means "pálivé papričky", small hot peppers in general, not one particular variety. In shops the jarred kind is by far the most common. It is sold as sterilised vegetables ("sterilovaná zelenina") under labels such as "feferony", "feferonky", "pálivé feferony" or "feferony šipky", with round "kulaté feferonky" also on offer. The fresh kind is usually a slim green, yellow or red pod a few centimetres long. Both are almost always forms of Capsicum annuum, the same species as sweet peppers. The labels show a heat scale that runs from "jemně pálivé" (mildly hot) to "ostře pálivé" (sharply hot).
How it tastes
Jarred feferonky taste sour and slightly sweet from the vinegar brine, which usually contains sugar and sometimes a sweetener. The heat builds after the first bite. The flesh stays fairly crisp and juicy, and the brine often carries mustard seed or allspice. Fresh feferonky taste green and grassy, with a clean, sharp heat that sits mainly in the seeds and pale inner ribs. How hot they are varies widely between products and harvests, so taste a small piece first.
Common questions
Are feferonky hot?
Are feferonky the same as pepperoncini?
How long do opened feferonky keep?
What can I do if feferonky are too hot?
Do jarred feferonky contain allergens or additives?
How are feferonky pickled at home?
Deep dive
3 min read
Varieties
Feferony šipky (long feferonky)
: slim, pointed peppers, usually yellow-green or red, pickled whole. These are the most common Czech jarred type, sold by producers such as efko in both mildly hot and sharply hot versions.
Kulaté feferonky (round feferonky)
: small round peppers with thick walls, pickled whole. Czech producers such as Znojmia sell them, and they are often stuffed with cheese for tapas-style snacks.
Balkánské feferony (Balkan-style feferony)
: pale yellow-green, finger-shaped peppers in brine. They are usually labelled as only mildly hot.
Fresh feferonky
: sold loose or in small packs in the vegetable section, in green, yellow or red. Czech gardeners also grow Hungarian and Balkan hot types from seed.
Extra-hot jarred peppers
: some Czech producers also pickle very hot chillies such as habanero and sell them under the feferonky name. These are much hotter than ordinary feferonky.
Relatives, not the same product
: The mild, golden pickled peppers sold abroad as "pepperoncini" (Greek or Tuscan friggitello types) share the name's origin but are generally milder than what a Czech shopper expects from feferonky. In Italy itself, peperoncino means hot chilli. Fresh bird's-eye and other Asian chillies, sold in Czech shops as "chilli papričky", are a different, usually hotter group.
History
The word feferonka comes from the Austrian German "Pfefferoni", which goes back to the Italian "peperone" (pepper) and was reshaped by the German word "Pfeffer" (pepper). In Czech it came to mean small hot peppers of any kind. Pickling peppers in vinegar brine is part of the wider Central European tradition of preserving garden vegetables for winter, alongside gherkins, beetroot and sweet peppers. Jarred feferonky are now a standard part of the Czech sterilised-vegetable range.
Science
The heat comes from capsaicinoids, mainly capsaicin. These are concentrated in the pale inner ribs (placenta) that hold the seeds, which is why removing the ribs and seeds makes a pepper milder. Heat is measured in Scoville heat units. Feferonky range from mild types to quite hot ones, depending on variety and growing conditions. Capsaicin does not dissolve well in water but does dissolve in fat and alcohol, so dairy or oily foods soften the burning feeling better than water.
In pickling, the acetic acid in vinegar lowers the pH so that sterilised jars are safe to store at room temperature. Producers may add calcium chloride to keep the peppers firm, and sugar or sweeteners to balance the sourness. Some of the heat passes into the brine over time.
Sourcing and ethics
Peppers for Czech jars come from domestic growers and from other EU and nearby countries. Labels give the producer and, where required, the origin. Peppers are a field crop that needs a lot of hand labour, so where workers' conditions are a concern, buying from producers that name their sources and certifications is one way to respond. Growing your own is easy in a sunny Czech garden or on a balcony, and pickling a home harvest avoids packaging and transport.