Ajvar: Balkan roasted pepper relish, fried for a full hour
In the Balkans ajvar is made in September, often out in the yard, from a whole crate of peppers at once. At home an oven and the widest pan you own will do. The entire secret is in the last stage: the purée is fried in oil for a full hour, until the water has gone and the colour has deepened from bright red to brick. Cut half an hour off that and you get a watery purée that separates in the jar within a week.
Your own work in that: 2 h 25 min.
- Roasting 45 min
- Peeling 55 min
- Frying 60 min
- Jars and processing 30 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneRoast the peppers and aubergine
Lay the peppers and the aubergine (pricked with a fork) whole on two or three trays and roast at 220 °C for 40–45 minutes, turning once. The skin should char black and lift away from the flesh in blisters — that is what gives ajvar the smoky taste it is known by.
Ingredients: 2500 g red bell peppers · 500 g aubergine · 6 cloves garlic
TipPale-roasted peppers give a dull ajvar with no smoky aroma. Don't be afraid of the black: only the skin burns, and you are peeling it off anyway.
The skin should blacken and blister awaySteam them covered
Move the hot vegetables into a bowl and cover tightly with a plate or film for 20 minutes. Steam condenses between skin and flesh, and the skin then slips off in sheets instead of tearing away in shreds with the flesh.
Twenty minutes covered; the steam loosens the skinPeel and drain
Pull the skins off the peppers, remove the cores and seeds, and scoop the flesh out of the aubergine with a spoon. Tip everything into a sieve for 15 minutes (about 25 minutes including the peeling). Up to a cup of juice will drain out — the less remains, the less frying you face later. Don't rinse the peppers under water: you would wash the smoke away.
TipFingers do this better than a knife. If the skin clings in places, leave it — a few black specks only add character.
Skin lifts in sheets, juice drains belowMince it coarsely
Put the flesh through a mincer on the coarse plate, or blend it briefly in pulses. Ajvar should have visible texture, not the smoothness of a mousse. Blended smooth it loses its character and becomes ordinary purée.
Fry an hour in a wide pan
Heat the oil (minus the 4 tbsp set aside for the jars) in your widest pan and add the purée. Fry over medium heat for 60 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes with a long-handled wooden spoon and scraping the base — the thickening purée spits. For the last 10 minutes add the crushed garlic, salt, sugar, pepper, vinegar and chilli. By the end it should be thick enough that the spoon leaves a trail showing the pan.
Ingredients: 180 ml olive oil · 3 tbsp wine vinegar · 2 tsp salt · 1 tsp sugar · ½ tsp chilli flakes · ½ tsp pepper
TipA wide pan instead of a pot is not fussiness: evaporation depends on surface area. In a narrow pot the same batch would take far longer.
The spoon leaves a trail down to the panFill the jars
Scald the jars. Spoon in the boiling ajvar, leaving 1 cm of headspace, and top each with a spoon of oil: a layer of fat shuts out the air. Seal, invert for 10 minutes, then process 20 minutes in water reaching three quarters up the jars.
Ingredients: 180 ml olive oil · 3 tbsp wine vinegar · 2 tsp salt · 1 tsp sugar · ½ tsp chilli flakes · ½ tsp pepper
A spoon of oil on top, then processing
Before you start
How to eat it
On bread with white cheese, with grilled meat, with scrambled eggs, as the base of a pasta sauce. In the Balkans it is one of the most everyday accompaniments to bread and meat.
Without aubergine
Many families make ajvar from peppers alone — an equally traditional version, with a clearer, sweeter pepper flavour. The aubergine mellows and thickens; without it, fry about 15 minutes longer.
How much it makes
2.5 kg of peppers leaves about 1.2 kg of ajvar — four jars of 300 ml. The loss is enormous and entirely normal: peppers are 90 % water.
How long it keeps
Once processed, keep it in the fridge for up to a month or freeze in portions for a year. Do not store it in the pantry: peppers and aubergine are low-acid vegetables, three spoons of vinegar do not change that, and home processing at 100°C does not destroy botulism spores. Always use a clean spoon on an opened jar and finish it within a week.