White Pepper Vs Black Pepper

The previous post (Dragon Fruit Plant) reminds me the another plant, which I think I should mention & share with you all here ---- Pepper (Piper Nigrum).

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I guess, whenever cooking (especially soups), most people like to mix some white pepper powder into the dishes, as this not only can modify & improve the taste, also can boost up our eating appetite; black pepper plays the same role too, with an additional role, as a garnish for various kind of dishes.

Even the white pepper & black pepper can be considered as the most famous spice use in the kitchen, but most people have limited understanding on them. What is the different between white pepper & black pepper?

I was shocked, as some of my friends (they are Sarawakians & Sarawak is one of the largest pepper producers in Malaysia) don’t know that the white pepper & black pepper are actually from a single pepper plant.

The black peppers are produced from the immatured green peppercorns (shell + seed, some even the seed not yet properly formed). These immatured pepper fruits are dried directly under the hot sun after harvested to become black pepper;

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However the white pepper are produced from the matured peppercorns (color turn into yellow green, orange or red with seed properly formed). The harvested matured pepper clusters are firstly soaked in the water (pool), so that the shells rotted & can be easily remove from the seeds in the following washing processes. The seeds are later dried under the hot sun to become the white pepper.

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