What is White Pepper? by: Everyone 22 Comments Posted:10/13/2020Updated:10/07/2020 You’ll see white pepper in the ingredients lists of many of our Chinese recipes.In fact, if pepper is in a Chinese or other Asian recipe, it’s almost always white pepper rather than black.But what is white pepper exactly, how is it different from black pepper, and how is it used? As such a ubiquitous ingredient here at The Woks of Life, we figured we ought to explain.  We’ll cover everything in this short post.  What is White Pepper? How Is It Different from Black Pepper? It may surprise you to know that white peppercorns, black peppercorns, and even green peppercorns all come from the same plant.

That plant is piper nigrum, or the pepper plant, a vine that produces berries.Those berries, processed in varying ways, are what we know as peppercorns.  Black pepper, the most common spice derived from this plant, is produced by taking the green, unripe berries of the plant, cooking them in hot water, and drying them.After drying, the berry skin around the seed blackens and shrinks, and voila! The resulting dried product is a black peppercorn.  White pepper, on the other hand, is processed when the berries of the pepper plant are ripe.

The outer skin of the berry is removed, leaving only the seed inside.The seeds are then dried to make white peppercorns.  So really, the difference between white and black pepper lies in when the berries from the piper nigrum plant are ha

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