What Is Black pepper and How Can I Use It?

White pepper consists of the seed of the pepper plant alone, with the darker colored skin of the pepper fruit removed. This is usually accomplished by a process known as retting, where fully ripe peppers are soaked in water for about a week, during which the flesh of the pepper softens anddecomposes.

Rubbing then removes what remains of the fruit, and the naked seed is dried. Alternative processes are used for removing the outer pepper from the seed, including decortication, the removal of the outer layer from black pepper from small peppers through mechanical, chemical or biological methods.

White pepper is sometimes 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 have differing flavor due to the presence of certain compounds in the outer fruit layer of the berry that are not found in the seed.

Peppercorns are the dried berries of the Piper nigrum vine, and every color in the spice aisle is the same fruit at a different stage.

Whole corns hold their aromatic oils for years; once ground, the same oils evaporate within months. That gap is the whole argument for buying corns and grinding to order.

More than 370 recipes on Recipeland call for whole peppercorns, beyond the thousands that use ground black pepper.

Black pepper is produced from the still-green unripe drupes of the pepper plant. The drupes are cooked briefly in hot water, both to clean them and to prepare them for drying. The heat ruptures cell walls in the pepper, speeding the work of browning enzymes during drying.

The drupes are dried in the sun or by machine for several days, during which the pepper around the seed shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer. Once dried, the spice is called black peppercorn. Black peppercorn is considered spicer than white peppercorn.

It is quite surprising that the use of pepper has come so much into fashion, seeing that in other substances which we use, it is sometimes their sweetness, and sometimes their appearance that has attracted our notice.

Pepper loses flavor and aroma through evaporation, so airtight storage helps preserve pepper's original spiciness longer. Pepper can also lose flavor when exposed to light, which can transform piperine into nearly tasteless. 

*Once ground, pepper's aromatics can evaporate quickly; most culinary sources recommend grinding whole peppercorns immediately before use for this reason.

Green peppercorns are the same berry as black pepper, picked young and underripe. Instead of being dried until hard and dark, they are preserved soft, usually packed in brine or vinegar, sometimes freeze-dried or sun-dried with their green color kept.

The flavor is pepper without the bark. It is fresh and a little fruity, with a milder, rounder heat than the sharp bite of black peppercorns. Brined ones are soft enough to crush between your fingers and carry a pickled tang on top.

They come from Piper nigrum, the same vine behind black and white and red peppercorns, which are just different stages of ripeness and processing.

Sichuan pepper is also know as anise pepper, prickly ash or simply Chinese pepper is a hot, slightly peppery dried berry from the prickly ash family.  In large amounts is causing a numbing effect on the palate.

Inside the berries are tiny black seeds that are bitter and are removed from split berries to create the best quality spice.

Originating in Sichuan province china it is a very popular flavoring that characterizes dishes from the Sichuan region and throughout China.

If you cannot find Sichuan peppers you may substitute black pepper instead, although for an authentic flavor make efforts to find the real thing.

White peppercorns and black peppercorns come from the same plant, the same berry even. The difference is how they're processed. For white pepper the ripe red berries are soaked in water for a week or more until the dark outer skin rots away, then the pale inner seed is dried.

That extra step does two things. It strips out much of the sharp, aromatic heat that lives in the skin, leaving a milder, rounder bite. It also leaves behind that earthy, faintly funky, almost barnyard note that black pepper never has.

The fermentation is what you're tasting.

So white pepper isn't just black pepper with the color removed. It's a quieter, earthier spice with a flavor of its own.