How to choose and cook peppers?

Pepper, CV express

Did you know? The pepper falls into the “fruit-vegetable” category. This means that it is indeed a fruit in the botanical sense, just like the tomato, green bean, eggplant, chili pepper, cucumber, zucchini or sweet potato, but it is consumed as a vegetable, meaning in a salty version. For this reason, a particular classification is used, that of fruit-vegetable to specify consumption first, then the botanical classification. Are you lost? Here is the explanation so that you never again get confused between fruit and vegetable!

The different colors of pepper

Several varieties of peppers are available, with various shapes: square, elongated, pointed. In terms of colors, the most common are green, yellow, red, and even orange. You should know that initially all peppers are green, it is then the stage of maturity that influences the color. For example, the green pepper with 26 kcal/100g*, picked before maturity contains 3 g of sugars. Next comes the yellow pepper with 30.7 kcal/100g and 4.3g of sugars. Then finally the red pepper, fully ripe, with 36.6 kcal/100g and 4.8g of sugars. This sugar level therefore has an influence on the taste. A green pepper will have a more bitter taste, while that of the red pepper will tend more towards sweetness.

The benefits of pepper

In addition to its color and sweet taste, peppers are also one of the foods rich in vitamin C, an antioxidant that protects cells from aging, regulates cholesterol, helps manage stress better, etc. It also contains vitamin and provitamin A, which plays a role in the retina, but also collagen and cell renewal. Finally, as with all fresh vegetables and fruits, peppers are rich in dietary fiber, which has an impact on intestinal transit, while stabilizing sugar and fat levels, and helps achieve that famous feeling of satiety. So many excellent reasons to include them in our recipes.

When is pepper season?

With the season starting in April, peppers are in peak season until August.

How to choose your pepper?

When buying, choose fruits with smooth, taut, firm and plump skin, without bruises or soft areas. Yoni Cohen, greengrocer at Maison Emali (vegetable supplier for major hotels and chef Cyril Lignac) even advises choosing “firm” to choose your fruits and vegetables well, since it is a product to be “transformed”, which means to be cut and then cooked. Unlike other fruits such as tomatoes, whose texture should be more supple.

Although it is delicious, it is not one of the French people’s favorite products, with a small 13th place in terms of average household consumption*, with 2 kg/year. A low score for this vegetable-fruit that nevertheless only wants good for us…

How to store it properly?

In the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator, quite simply.

How to cook pepper?

Peppers are an easy product to cook, since you just need to remove the stalk and seeds before cutting them into pieces, strips or brunoise.

In the kitchen, it can be enjoyed raw in salads, cooked in ratatouille, roasted in the oven and then mixed in an addictive sauce with pasta, or on a pizza base or puff pastry tart. It is also part of the “sun vegetables” family, just like eggplants, tomatoes and zucchini. You can even use roasted strips on divine summer bruschettas or in a summer omelette. Finally, we think of it when we want to make tasty stuffed vegetables, in addition to or replacing classic tomatoes.

*Ciqual Table – Handles
*Kantar Worldpanel, purchases for in-home consumption per household – Average 2017-2019