Tasmanian Pepperberry

$6.00$700.00

Tasmanian pepperberry (Tasmannia lanceolata) is a great alternative to conventional pepper.  It is like a cross between Sichuan pepper, plum and cloves.  Being much closer to the berry end of the spectrum than regular pepper, it is suited to both sweet and savoury dishes – it is equally at home in a casserole as it is in a quince paste.  Serve it fresh-cracked on ready-to-serve food to appreciate its amazing bush aromatic and spicy bite.  Use pepperberry in cooking to mellow the spice and bring attention to its fruity dimension.

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 locations in the Tasmanian wilderness, 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

It all depends on how you intend to use it!

Freeze dried pepperberry looks exactly like the fresh berry. It has a delicate crispy texture that can quickly get crushed to a vibrant purple powder, which is very attractive when sprinkled decoratively over food.

It has a notable sweet fruity flavour at first, followed by its characteristic heat.

Because freeze dried pepper is a bit more expensive it is best used as a garnish in a meal, dessert or in a cocktail.

Air dried pepperberry looks exactly like traditional peppercorns but packs much more of a punch! Although it lacks the soft fruitiness of freeze dried pepperberry it makes up for it in spicy potency! If you intend to use pepperberry in a grinder then you need air dried berries.

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.  Now orchards are beginning to appear around Tasmania as the industry transitions from wild harvest to orchard based production.

 

* 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 follow this link.

Additional information

Weight N/A
Type

Air-dried, Freeze-dried

Form

Whole, Milled, Cracked

Weight

4g, 25g, 50g, 500g, 1kg, 4kg

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