Pepper: white, green or black?
Contrary to what one might believe, the three main commercial types of pepper (white, green and black) are always obtained from the same plant, called Piper nigrum .
Piper nigrum uses fruits; these are small, almost spherical berries, first green when unripe, then red when ripe.
- Black pepper is produced by drying unripe fruits, washed and blanched in hot water. The berries are then dried in the sun or using industrial technologies. During drying, the initially green Piper nigrum berries take on the typical black or dark brown color. This blackening is speeded up by the breaking of the pulp and the heat developed during drying.
- Green pepper, like black, is produced from unripe berries, whose green color is maintained by treatments with sulfur dioxide, canning or freeze-drying.
The green one is a pepper with a fresh and aromatic taste, less spicy and more delicate than black pepper.
- White pepper is obtained from the fruit left to mature on the plant until it turns red. After harvesting, the berries are left to soak in water for about a week. In this way it is possible to easily remove the pulp of the fruit, freeing the internal seed. This is deprived of the external peel (pericarp) by rubbing, then dried to obtain the ready-to-use white pepper.
Alternatively, this type of pepper can be obtained by removing the dried pulp and the pericarp of black pepper using special machines.
Even the white pepper has a slightly more delicate taste than the black pepper and goes well with light-colored dishes, avoiding the generation of unsightly black spots.
As for pink pepper, the starting plant is no longer the Piper nigrum, but rather the Schinus molle tree, of which the berries are once again used.
