A Case Against White Pepper
Poor taste can’t be forgiven by slightly better presentation
Disclaimer: This was written in good fun, and isn’t meant to legitimately criticize anyone’s personal tastes. Food is an artform, and while you will be judged harshly by this author if you don’t season your food, it’s ultimately your decision how you prepare food.
I’m angry with several internet videos I’ve seen that misuse white pepper. The amount of times that I see someone say they are using white pepper instead of black pepper so that you can’t see the flakes in the finished product is infuriating.
White pepper has a different taste than black pepper. White pepper is simply the seed inside of a ripened black pepper fruit. Black pepper is the whole fruit, unripe, and dried. You could make an argument that white pepper is a part of black pepper as a whole, but that’s not the point.
The point is that black pepper is stronger than white pepper in both heat and flavor, and if you are going to use a 1:1 ratio while replacing black pepper with white pepper, your dish is probably going to be bland and underseasoned. If you are cooking for an eater that is so picky that they can’t bear to see flakes of spices in their food, you need to let them starve.
White pepper has its place in some recipes since it has a very subtle heat, and has more of an earthy flavor that can get lost in the other notes that are in black pepper. I’m not trying to say that white pepper is useless, but I am saying that so-called chefs that use white pepper as a full on replacement for black pepper should not be trusted.
Food presentation as an artform has become detrimental to the culinary arts. I’ll admit my bias by saying that I think that sausage gravy and biscuits are a culinary masterpiece. It may look like baby vomit, but it tastes amazing and eating it makes me not hungry anymore, which in my opinion is the first and only point of food. If I were to be served sausage gravy that didn’t have black flecks throughout the jiggly mass, I would raise hell and demand an explanation as to why my food wasn’t seasoned. If that explanation was, “We didn’t want anybody to be offended by black spots in their food, so we used white pepper,” I would ask for my bill and leave.
Food is meant to be eaten, and the beauty should be in the taste, not the look. I count on seeing some semblance of flavor before I taste my food. Unfortunately, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, creamy soups, and other lightly colored foods are in danger of becoming less tasty with each white mom that starts a youtube cooking channel.
