Description

Tasmanian pepper – Experience the difference!

Tasmanian pepperberry (Tasmannia lanceolata), also known as Tasmanian pepper, bush pepper, mountain pepper or native pepperberry, is a rare spice native to the wilderness of Tasmania.

Pepperberry is a superb alternative to regular black pepper – perfect for seasoning your meals when you want something a little bit different.

We hand-forage native Tasmanian pepperberry from carefully selected and managed sites across Tasmania, to bring you the most incredible pepper you will ever experience! The taste of the Tasmanian wilderness. 

A sensory journey through the Tasmanian bush

Despite Tasmanian pepper (Tasmannia lanceolata) looking similar to regular black pepper (Piper nigrum), which originates in Southern India, they are completely different plants with different flavours and aromas.

Tasmanian pepper has far more interesting, complex layers to it. The aptly named “pepperberry” possess fruity & spicy qualities most commonly described as a cross between a plum, ginger and Sichuan pepper and has an amazing fragrance with notes of pepper, woody lantana, cinnamon, floral, citrus and sweet menthol.

Taking us on a sensory journey through the Tasmanian bush, it starts off with a fresh, slight fruity, menthol note. Like a eucalyptus forest after the rains.
Then appears the layer of warm spiciness; ginger, cinnamon and the bitterness of plum skin.
Whilst savouring these interesting combination of flavours for 5 seconds your mouth starts to tingle and you get a playful Sichuan pepper style numbing heat.

This slowly builds and spreads with a bush fire intensity!

Be careful with delayed heat! It can be deceiving when adding pepper to your meal!

How do I use pepperberry?

Probably the best and easiest way to use Tasmanian pepperberry is as an alternative to regular black pepper.

Simple! Freshly cracked directly onto the plate is the best way to enjoy the full pepperberry flavour and aromatics.

When cooking with pepperberry you can add early or late in the cooking process.  Late addition preserves the full pepperberry experience.  The advantage of adding early is that the spicy bite is very much reduced with time and heat, which brings focus to the fruity character.  Using pepperberry in this way will produce a very rich and dark red sauce.

Remember – add lots early OR sparingly late.

Pepperberry is so versatile and is well suited to sweet dishes as well as savoury. Hence why it is a key ingredient in all our sweet preserves!

Try it cracked onto icecream or a sorbet.

Final fun tip, pepperberry bleeds a rich purple colour onto your food. However, if you add lemon juice it will turn a vibrant bright red!
Try it out!  If you are really shooting for colour remember that freeze dried berries are somewhat more vibrant than air dried berries.

How do I grind pepperberry?

It can either be ground in a mortar and pestle or put into a regular pepper grinder. Pepperberry doesn’t grind as well as black pepper – because it is a larger “pepper corn” – and doesn’t fit into the grinder teeth as well.  Also pepperberry can rehydrate in moist kitchens and then become difficult to grind.  Rehydrated berries need to be dried again before they can be ground easily.  Try drying them in the oven on the lowest heat with the fan on.  To improve pepper grinder efficiency we pre-crack our berries to reduce fragment size so that the pepperberry fragments fall easily into the grinder teeth.  Another trick is to only use small berries in your grinder – effective if you are able to grade your berries.   Our grinder refills are precracked pepperberry – our preferred grinder solution.

Air Dried vs Freeze Dried Pepperberry

Freeze dried berries have a more vibrant fruity flavour than air dried berries.  Additionally freeze dried berries have a slightly different colour – as a dry milled powder they are more purple in colour.  In a wet environment freeze dried are again more purple but only at neutral ph – such as in eggs or milk based products.  In acidic environs both berries are scarlet red (ph < 4.0) .

Freeze dried berries are not more spicy than air dried berries.

In practice your choice of berry might come down to your intended use.  If you intend to use the berries in a grinder then you will have to use air dried berries – they are smaller and harder – much better for grinding.  As a garnish in a meal, dessert or in a cocktail freeze dried is much better because it retains the original shape of the fruit more or less.

Pepperberry leaf and berries contain more anti-oxidants than blueberries!

It also contains natural anti-inflammatories and the hot tasting compounds called polygodials.  These have been shown to have a wide range of biological activities – more research is required to substantiate health benefits. For nutritional information and background industry facts check out the RIRDC fact sheet.

Historical facts

Indigenous uses of pepperberry are not recorded asides from use as a remedy for tooth ache. Early European settlers used it in flavouring and identified it as having commercial importance in 1804.  At some stage the plant was imported to Cornwall in the UK and grown to produce “Cornish pepper”!  However it was not until the 1990’s that significant efforts were made to develop an industry and pepperberry became widely available across Australia.

 

* Source: Brand Miller, J., James, K.W. and Maggiore, P. (1993) Tables of Composition of Australian Aboriginal Foods. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Konczak, I., Zabaras, D., Dunstan, M., Aguas, P., Roulfe, R., Pavan, A., (2009) Health Benefits of Australian Native Foods, RIRDC Pub. No. 09/133.

 

If you are interested in wholesale pepperberry then please contact us via email – info@wildpepperisle.com.au