Ingredient: Peppers
(Black, white, red, green and peppercorns (when dried))
Category: Herbs, Spices & Seasoning
Season: All
Black pepper
Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The same fruit is also used to produce white pepper, red/pink pepper, and green pepper.
Black pepper is native to South India and is extensively cultivated there and elsewhere in tropical regions.
The fruit, known as a peppercorn when dried, is a small drupe five millimetres in diameter, dark red when fully mature, containing a single seed.
Dried ground pepper is one of the most common spices in European cuisine and its descendants, having been known and prized since antiquity for both its flavour and its use as a medicine.
The spiciness of black pepper is due to the chemical piperine. Ground black peppercorn, usually referred to simply as "pepper", may be found on nearly every dinner table in some parts of the world, often alongside table salt.
Varieties
Black pepper is produced from the still-green unripe berries of the pepper plant.
The berries are cooked briefly in hot water, both to clean them and to prepare them for drying. The heat ruptures cell walls in the fruit, speeding the work of browning enzymes during drying.
The berries are dried in the sun or by machine for several days, during which the fruit around the seed shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer, the result of a fungal reaction. Once dried, the fruits are called black peppercorns.
White pepper
White pepper consists of the seed only, with the fruit removed.
This is usually accomplished by allowing fully ripe berries to soak in water for about a week, during which the flesh of the fruit softens and decomposes. Rubbing then removes what remains of the fruit, and the naked seed is dried.
Alternative processes are used for removing the outer fruit from the seed, including removal of the outer layer from black pepper produced from unripe berries.
In the U.S., white pepper is often used in dishes like light-coloured sauces or mashed potatoes, where ground black pepper would visibly stand out.
There is disagreement regarding which is generally spicier.
They do have differing flavours due to the presence of certain compounds in the outer fruit layer of the berry that are not found in the seed.
Green pepper
Green pepper, like black, is made from the unripe berries.
Dried green peppercorns are treated in a manner that retains the green colour, such as treatment with sulphur dioxide or freeze-drying.
Pickled peppercorns, also green, are unripe berries preserved in brine or vinegar.
Fresh, unpreserved green pepper berries, largely unknown in the West, are used in some Asian cuisines, particularly Thai cuisine Their flavor has been described as piquant and fresh, with a bright aroma. They decay quickly if not dried or preserved.
Red pepper (or Pink pepper)
A rarely seen product called pink pepper or red pepper consists of ripe red pepper berries preserved in brine and vinegar.
Even more rarely seen, ripe red peppercorns can also be dried using the same colour-preserving techniques used to produce green pepper.
Pink pepper from Piper nigrum is distinct from the more-common dried "pink peppercorns", which are the fruits of a plant from a different family, the Peruvian pepper tree, Schinus molle, and its relative the Brazilian pepper tree, Schinus terebinthifolius.
In years past there was debate as to the health safety of pink peppercorns, which is mostly no longer an issue. Sichuan peppercorn is another "pepper" that is botanically unrelated to black pepper.
Flavour
Pepper gets its spicy heat mostly from the piperine compound, which is found both in the outer fruit and in the seed. Refined piperine, milligram-for-milligram, is about one percent as hot as the capsaicin in chile peppers.
The outer fruit layer, left on black pepper, also contains important odour-contributing terpenes including pinene, sabinene, limonene, caryophyllene, and linalool, which give citrusy, woody, and floral notes.
The above scents are mostly missing in white pepper, which is stripped of the fruit layer. White pepper can gain some different odours (including musty notes) from its longer fermentation stage.
Pepper loses flavour and aroma through evaporation, so airtight storage helps preserve pepper's original spiciness longer. Pepper can also lose flavour when exposed to light, which can transform piperine into nearly tasteless isochavicine.
Once ground, pepper's aromatics can evaporate quickly; most culinary sources recommend grinding whole peppercorns immediately before use for this reason.
Handheld pepper mills (or "pepper grinders"), which mechanically grind or crush whole peppercorns, are used for this, sometimes instead of pepper shakers, dispensers of pre-ground pepper.
World trade
Peppercorns are, by monetary value, the most widely traded spice in the world , accounting for 20 percent of all spice imports in 2002. The price of pepper can be volatile, and this figure fluctuates a great deal year to year; for example, pepper made up 39 percent of all spice imports in 1998.
By weight, slightly more chilli peppers are traded worldwide than peppercorns . The International Pepper Exchange is located in Kochi, India.
Vietnam is the world's largest producer and exporter of pepper .
Other major producers include Indonesia, India, Brazil, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and China |