Pepper : Some helpful things to know ...

Also known as capsicums, bell peppers, sweet peppers or by their colours, for example red and yellow peppers.

These are a non-hot member of a large family that varies enormously in size, shape, flavour and heat content and that includes all the chilli peppers.

Green peppers are the unripe state of red peppers and are the most aggressively flavoured, being vegetal, acidic and a little bitter, traits that soften with cooking. Once ripe and red, peppers are gentler and sweeter in flavour and far more use raw or cooked, although it's common to use red and green peppers together.

Yellow and orange peppers are individual varieties rather than stages between green and red peppers, and both of these were specially bred to be sweet and gentle.

Purple peppers have a slightly stronger flavour but will turn green when cooked.

Availability:
One sort or another is usually available fresh year round. Canned and bottled peppers are excellent if preserved in brine or oil but less useful if preserved in vinegar or other acid.

Choose the best:
Peppers have a very long life, particularly when refrigerated. Check for puckering around the stalk end or wrinkling of the skin as early signs of ageing.

Prepare it:
However you want to slice up a pepper, you always need to remove the core, pith and seeds. To skin peppers, lay them on a foil-lined grill pan and turn the grill to high. Turn them now and again until the skin is blackened all over, then put them in a bowl and cover with cling film, or seal in an airtight plastic bag. When they're cool, their skin can be peeled off easily with your fingers.

Store it:
Peppers are best kept chilled and out of the light.

Cook it:
To peel or not to peel. That is a major question. Peppers are unquestionably even nicer to eat when skinned, which can be done by charring over a flame or by pouring on boiling water. Both methods are fiddly and time-consuming, especially when skinned red peppers are so easily and cheaply available in bottles and tins; skinned Spanish piquillo peppers are a great store cupboard addition.

Whether using raw or to cook, peppers should be cut from top to bottom in large slabs and then the pale inner vertical membranes removed, as these are always bitter.

Because they're acceptable eating when raw, pieces of pepper that are only part cooked add colour, juiciness and crunch to stir-fries, when the short heating time will soften them without fully cooking.

Otherwise, whether stuffed and roasted, gently fried in olive oil (with garlic of course) or similarly simmered in (tinned) plum tomatoes as a side dish or added to casseroles, fully cooked peppers add reliable flavour, colour and satisfaction.

Rings of any colour of pepper are something that should remain in the recipes of past decades, because cutting them like this means the bitter inner membranes have not been removed.

Words and picture from article at BBC Good Food

I wonder have you a favourite colour pepper?
I think my favourite is red!

All the best Jan

May be worth pointing out that after wheat and milk, nightshades - which include not only peppers and chillies but also potatoes and tomatoes - may be a cause of digestive problems/allergies, and may worsen inflammatory conditions like arthritis.

Fortunately I'm not afflicted so bring 'em on!

chris c wrote:May be worth pointing out that after wheat and milk, nightshades - which include not only peppers and chillies but also potatoes and tomatoes - may be a cause of digestive problems/allergies, and may worsen inflammatory conditions like arthritis.

Fortunately I'm not afflicted so bring 'em on!

Thanks for this Chris ... there is also an article on Authority Nutrition about Bell Peppers.

The author Dr Atli Arnarson goes into quite good detail including the allergy concerns

"Adverse Effects and Individual Concerns

Bell peppers are generally healthy and well-tolerated, but some people may be allergic to them.

Bell Pepper Allergy
Allergy to bell peppers is rare.
However, some people that have pollen allergy may also be sensitive to bell peppers because of allergic cross-reactivity *(26, 27).
Allergic cross-reactions can happen between certain foods and pollen because they may contain the same allergens, or allergens that are similar in structure.

Bottom Line: When eaten in moderation, bell peppers do not have any adverse health effects. However, they may cause allergies in some people."

The reference 26 and 27 are these

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9825999

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9652302

This is the take home message given in the article ...

"Take Home Message

Bell peppers are rich in many vitamins and antioxidants, especially vitamin C and various carotenoids.
For this reason, eating them may have several health benefits, such as improved eye health, and reduced risk of several chronic diseases.
Apart from causing allergy in some people, they do not have any adverse health effects.
At the end of the day, bell peppers are an excellent addition to a healthy diet."

His full article is here
https://authoritynutrition.com/foods/bell-peppers/

All the best Jan

Interesting, I didn't know that connection before.

Generally I don't have problems with pollen but some years - and this is one - I tend to sneeze a bit while the tree pollen is circulating, and I used to be affected by one type of late flowering grass, but that was one of the many things that pretty much resolved on LCHF.

Sometimes the rape affects me, but I am reliably informed by farmers that rape pollen is heavy and falls straight down so the culprit is probably the cabbage stink that emanates from the leaves and stems. For some reason again it is worse in some years than others, and many people get affected, as happened a few years back.

In general the newer varieties seem to have less effect than the ones that were sown decades back when it was first popular. I still wouldn't trust margarine though.

More about Pepper.

Do You Ever Ask - Male And Female Peppers - Fact Or Fiction?

Matt Bray writes:

"A plant world sex scandal…

Do bell peppers have a gender? Some say they do. The idea has been around for a while but only recently has it caught traction. According to the theory, there are distinct male and female peppers and the gender indicates whether a bell pepper has more seeds or whether it is better for cooking or eating raw. Interesting theory, but is it fact or fiction?

Is the male and female peppers claim fact or fiction?

Total fiction. There’s no such thing as bell pepper sexes. But let’s break the urban legend down to make things clear.

The bell pepper gender theory

The theory states that the lobes or bumps on the bottom of the fruit are the indicators of the bell pepper’s sex so that you can tell the fruit’s gender by counting them. Male bell peppers, according to the theory, have only three lobes while female bell peppers have four. These genders point to their best use case: Male bell peppers, the theory states, are better for cooking while female bell peppers are sweeter, contain more seeds, and better eaten raw.

The lobe fallicy – What does the number of lobes actually indicate in a bell pepper?

Absolutely nothing in terms of sex. Bell peppers can have anywhere between two and five lobes, not just the three or four listed in this urban legend.

The number of lobes that a bell pepper has is related to the variety of bell pepper. There are different varieties that produce different numbers of lobes. Some produce two, while others may produce between three and five lobes. The most popular variety of bell pepper in the U.S. produces four lobes so many plants have been bred for this characteristic.

Do four-lobe bell peppers have more seeds?

They may, but only because they have more lobes, meaning more cavity space in which seeds can be grown. But even this is not 100% true all the time. Peppers can have a single chamber or multiple chambers containing the white pithy tissue with the seeds. Exactly how many chambers does not always indicate the number of seeds of the bell pepper, but more lobes is a better guess if you are hunting for bell pepper seeds.

Are these “female peppers” sweeter?

Sweetness has nothing to do with the amount of lobes on your pepper. It has everything to do with your cultivated variety, the soil you’ve grown your peppers in, the weather, and, especially, how long you’ve left the fruits on the vine. Bell peppers that have aged form green to their mature red will be sweeter, no matter if they have three lobes or four.

So is there anything interesting about gender in relation to bell peppers?

There is: the pepper plant creates “perfect flowers” also called hermaphroditic or unisex flowers. All plants of the nightshade family folllow suit (tomatoes, eggplants, sweet peppers, chili peppers, etc); their flowers contain both stamens and carpels – they have reproductive systems that are both male and female.

Some other types of plants have male flowers as well as female flowers. Sometimes these flowers are on the same plant and sometimes they grow on separate plants.

So the real truth here is that not only are bell peppers genderless, the flowers of the bell pepper plant themselves are – in a simplistic way – all genders. This is a pepper that breaks down all barriers."

Matt Bray's words from here
https://www.pepperscale.com/male-and-female-peppers/

I wonder do you have a favourite bell pepper?

Mine is red  

All the best Jan

If they are male where do the seeds come from?

More likely they are hermaphrodite, currently I have a green one which contains babies. I've seen this in all colours and all numbers of lobes over the years.