Spicy World Whole Green Peppercorns 4 Oz Bag - Steam Sterilized & All Natural

Well-priced, good-sized supply. They are properly dry, in good shape, and not stale. They are keeping well in a sealed container, though I go through them fairly fast. So, good stuff from Spicy World!If you aren't up to speed on green peppercorns, they are the same species (Piper nigrum) as black pepper and white, but picked before fully ripe (while the white ones are ripe black ones that get fermented and then have the dark outer husk removed). Green pepper is milder than black and white, and more vegetal and earthy in taste, though mostly very similar. These are probably a good bet if you like the scent and taste of black pepper but have a bit too much sensitivity to it. Might also be good "training pepper" for kids who find the black kind too strong for them yet.The best use I know of for this (and why I buy them in bulk) is making green peppercorn steak. For this, you need to soak them (in just enough water or broth to do the job) overnight or at least for several hours, so they soften. Then you add them and their water to a sauce or gravy, thick enough so that when you cover your steak with it, the entire steak is just teeming with peppercorns (in every bite you should get several of them). It's just really, really good. If you're pinched for time, you could grind them coarsely while dry, skip the soaking, and add them directly to your gravy/sauce during cooking and it should be okay, but part of the aesthetic experience of this dish is the popping of softened green peppercorns as you eat them.Anyway, this supply of the dried green peppercorns from Spicy World has been great. I use them in a grinder, too, for various things. It's good on salads, chicken, fish, and other stuff that might be overwhelmed a bit with black pepper. Oh, something I picked up on Martha Stewart's show: green or white pepper is also strangely good on strawberries, weird as that sounds. The green ones are also good (though in larger quantity than black pepper, because they're milder) for aesthetic reasons, if you want to make something green and have it not look like it has a bunch of pepper on it.