Black Pepper

 Before August 2022 Black pepper was a mere spice product I used occasionally on Food but once I got into Spices wholesale business Black pepper has become integral part of my daily routine. Black pepper is a wonderful spice used for many dishes across the globe. In my community pepper is given more importance and spice level on chettinad dishes depends on Black pepper and not chilly powder. Let us do a deep dive into this amazing spice item - first and foremost spicyness of Black pepper depends on 'Piperine' level; Piperine is the technical ingredient in Black pepper and piperine level and spice level are directly proportional to each other - meaning if more piperine level then spice level is good and if piperine level is low then spice level is also low. Black pepper is harvested roughly around November to February timeframe and they are creepers and they crawl through big oak trees. Entire Kerala, Kumuli, Yercaud, Kollimalai, Sirumalai, Coorg and Chigmangalur are some of the places where Black pepper is found in adundance. Most of the places where Coffee is grown you can find black pepper since Coffee and Black pepper are like Sachin-Sehwag partnership. 

   How is Black pepper Graded? Mostly Black pepper falls into '8 mm', 9 mm' or '10 mm' grades with 8mm being the small one and 10 mm being the big one (Super market category); Price increases with size and the most common one is '9mm'; Actually smaller ones are more spicier than the big ones but if you want your Vada or Pongal to have Black pepper pop out then chefs prefer big ones like 9mm. If you are going to crush it and use it as powder 8 mm is more than enough. None of the governments has regularized the norms for Grading hence Estate owners give it as a whole package containing all sizes. This is called Ungarbled pepper since sorting/grading did not happen. If growers sort pepper according to the sizes then that falls under garbled category and price is more since there was effort involved in sorting. 

The most common and simple test to check whether Black pepper is adulterated is the water test - if you soak black pepper in water and if it settles down at the bottom then that is unadulterated black pepper whereas if black pepper floats in water then that is papaya seeds. There is a twist to this test now for two reasons

[1] Thanks to Dengue, papaya seeds are in huge demand now since papaya seeds gets exported too. Hence mixing of papaya seeds has reduced quite a bit these days. 

[2] Due to Labor issues in Estates, Black pepper is harvested at one shot - meaning even the small ones that is in growth stage is plucked along with the big ones. One labor approximately does 4 trees per day and it makes more economic sense to pluck everything at one shot rather than doing it in two instances. Since everything is plucked (small, medium and large ones) in one shot it is also dried uniformly. Now the small ones (7 mm ) actually do float in water. This may give an impression that these are papaya seeds but if you taste you will realize it is pepper. 

I see following two major issues for Black pepper 

(a) Black pepper tends to lose weight upon time due to its moisture content. A 30 kgs sac can become 29.800 kgs under indirect light (near a window) within a month. Loss of 200 grams in monetary terms can be huge if you are dealing with bulk purchases. Most of the Estate owners take certain percentage to themselves (say 20%) and leave the remaining to Lease folks (80% of the yield); The guy who took the lease pays to estate owner based on the terms and conditions mutually agreed between them. Now lease folks play dirty tricks - just like how Shares gain upon holding for long term they tend to keep stock for longer term expecting a huge demand. Meanwhile time passes and pepper slowly loses weight and these folks spray rice bran oil on the pepper by that way weight is retained. Pepper where rice bran oil is sprayed tends to be less spicier. Even 2-3 years old stock is released by rice bran oil sprayed on them. Though rice bran oil is not harmful to health it overall brings out the flavor of this wonderful spice item. 

(b) Except Chigmnagalur I have dealt with pepper from many parts of India and found that traders deploy unethical ways in handling black pepper. In some parts pepper is boiled and vapour is captured through techniques thereby extracting the juice out of the pepper (spicyness of the pepper). This is sold to pharma companies, MNCs and exported to countries thereby leaving mere skeleton (sakkai) of black pepper for public. This practice is followed in Kollimalai and hence I stopped sourcing from there. 

Here are my suggestions on how to use Black pepper 

1. Consume Black pepper along with salt chunks in beetel leaves for immunity 
2. For crushing go for smaller size (8mm)
3. For Vada or Pongal go for bigger ones (9 or 10 mm)
4. If you hold black pepper in your hand - you should see black ones, sembattai ones, slight purple ones, small and big ones and you can confirm this is natural just like how bunch of people stand for a group picture (there will be people with both fair and black complexion, small and big individuals). If the color is uniform then you can assume artificial methods has been adopted for the uniform nature. 
5. Last but not the lease never expose Black pepper even in indirect sunlight as it tends to lose weight.