BLACK PEPPER – King of the Spices
Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, known as a peppercorn, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning.
Our Black Peppercorns come in a high quality grinder with an adjustable ceramic grinding mechanism for long life.
BLACK PEPPERCORNS: This is the type you’re likely most familiar with. Along with table salt, ground black pepper has long been one of the most used seasonings in kitchens around the world.
Black peppercorns actually start out as green peppercorns, they’ve just been cooked and dried in the sun.
To say that black pepper has a long and storied history would be the understatement of the century: It was once used as currency in Southeast Asia, and it was an essential part of the mummification process in Ancient Egypt.
Today, we mostly use ground black pepper and black peppercorns to make our food taste better.
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HISTORICALLY VALUABLE SPICE
Historically, black pepper is one of the most valuable spices that was ever traded. Peppercorns were often used as a commodity money in place of actual coin. So precious and expensive were they that in ancient Rome, you could have a rival killed for a mere handful of them.
When archaeologists uncovered Ramses II, they found black peppercorns stuffed in his nostrils – this was part of the ritual mummification process. During the Age of Discovery, black pepper and the profit of the spice trade was one of the reasons Portugal, Spain, France, and other European nations sailed the world and expanded the map: to find new sources of spice. Nearly all pepper traded in the ancient world made its way through Malabar on the Indian peninsula, and this is the main reason the region developed as a major port and trading post in the ancient world. Indeed, black peppercorns play a distinct played in human history that is more entrenched in the development of nations than we understand.
Black pepper is used as a spice in nearly all the world’s cuisines as a pungent, spicy, heating agent for food due to the presence of capsaicin and piperine. Teasings of citrus and wood also add to black pepper’s allure. Black peppercorns can be used whole in stews, soups, stocks, and pickles.
