Green Peppercorns in Brine is a very nifty way to preserve fresh green peppercorns.
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📕 What are Green Peppercorns in brine?
Green Peppercorns in brine are pickled fresh green peppercorns that are preserved in
The fruity bright flavor and mild heat is great to elevate homemade meals and other dishes.
The green peppercorns are hard and bright green when freshly harvested, but can't be kept for too long.
After the drupes have been picked, they need to be preserved within 24 hours.
Because green pepper is difficult to get, I brine the drupes ASAP after I harvest them from my tropical garden in Goa.
The fresh green pepper spice gets soft when brined and is used in various dishes thereafter.
One of the most popular and delicious ways to enjoy brined peppercorns is in a creamy steak green pepper sauce.
🧅 Ingredient Tips
The US and metric measurements are located in the recipe card below.
- Green Peppercorn Drupes — Fresh, bright-green drupes are preferred. Green peppercorns are raw. They turn red when left to ripen. Black peppercorn is just the green peppercorn left to dry in the sun.
- Water
- Salt — regular table salt, or you can use clean sea salt too or pink Himalayan salt.
- Vinegar — Pick a vinegar with about 5% acidity, such as white wine vinegar or regular distilled vinegar. Don't use a vinegar with a strong flavor profile (i.e., apple cider vinegar) as this can change the flavor of your brine (except if you feel like experimenting).
Tip: If some green peppercorn drupes have ripened and turned bright red, you can still use them and brine them.
How to make it?
Step 1
Place clean green peppercorn drupes into a small canning glass jar.
Step 2
Combine and bring vinegar, salt, and water to a quick boil over the stove top in a pan.
This is your homemade brine.
Step 3
Pour brine over the green pepper in the jar.
Close the jar and leave out for two days at room temperature before refrigerating your pickled green peppercorn.
📖 Recipe
How to make Green Peppercorns in Brine
Ingredients
- 4-6 Green Peppercorn Drupes *see Notes
For the brine:
- ½ cup Water
- 2 Tablespoon Salt
- 3 Tablespoon Vinegar
Instructions
- Rinse your green peppercorns well. I keep mine in some water with a few drops of vinegar to get rid of insects trapped between the drupes.4-6 Green Peppercorn Drupes
- Pat dry the clean peppercorn.
- Keep your jar ready and place the green peppercorn drupes into the jar. The more you can fill it up, the better.
- Prepare the brine by heating a pot with the water, salt, and vinegar. Mix it all well and bring to a quick boil.½ cup Water, 2 Tablespoon Salt, 3 Tablespoon Vinegar
- Quickly pour the hot brine over the green peppercorn in the jar so that the pepper is covered with the liquid.
- Close the jar with the lid and keep out for two days to brine
- Refrigerate after three days and use in your food whenever you like.
Notes
- Peppercorn drupes vary in sizes. The amount I mentioned is just an approximate indication. If you can, fill up your jar with peppercorn drupes.
- If your jar is only half full, that's ok too. You can always add more green peppercorns later to the jar. This might happen if you grow your green peppercorn drupes at home. You should pick your green peppercorns when they are ready to be harvested and not too early.
- You can also add the red ripe peppercorns to your jar if you like. The red ones are great when brined too and preserve for a long time as well. Red ripe peppercorn taste fruitier.
- Use a vinegar with about 5% acidity, 6% acidity is ok as well. If it’s a stronger vinegar add some more water to even it out and if it’s a lighter vinegar, add more vinegar than water.
- Use only a clean, sterilized jar to prepare this canned green peppercorn pickle.
- You may double or triple the quantities of the recipe and use 8 ounces or 12 ounces glasses.
- 4 ounce jars = 120 ml
Equipment
- 4 Ounce Canning Jar 120 ml Canning Jar
Nutrition
🥣 Ideas to use them
Just add some of your pickled green
Here are some practical ideas:
- Make a Green Peppercorn cream sauce for beef steak, pork, lamb, salmon. For example, add some to this mushroom veal Jägerschnitzel.
- Add some to your favorite gravy. I like 3-5 brined peppercorns in my mushroom gravy.
- In soups, as in my chicken mulligatawny soup or my spiced broth soup.
- Crush the brined peppercorn and add them to a French vinaigrette dressing.
- Brie Cheese with green peppercorn (my favorite!). If you ever want to attempt to make your own brie cheese.
- Add your brined green peppercorns to infuse pickled spiced jalapeños or fermented vegetables.
- Cured Salami with green peppercorn for those of you who dare to cure meats. Please let me know if you succeed! 😀
- Pep up (pun intended) your homemade Dijon Mustard Paste to elevate the flavor profile.
- Spaghetti with dill and green pepper sauce from Gourmandelle.com.
- Peppercorn Crusted Beef Tenderloin from Eatingwell.com.
🍱 Storing
Store your homemade green peppercorn pickle in the fridge. It doesn't matter whether you are in a warm tropical environment or in a cold weather climate.
It's just better to keep the brined pepper in a cool place because you won't use it all the time and regularly, like other ingredients.
This prevents all mold growth, guaranteed!
In fact, a jar of homemade brined green pepper will last you for 12 months if stored properly in the refrigerator.
💡 How to get fresh green peppercorn?
Getting fresh green peppercorns can be a challenge.
I used to buy ready-made brined green pepper in Aldi until I got some fresh green peppercorns and made my own batch of brined peppercorns.
The homemade batch was so much better!
You can buy green peppercorn drupes in an Asian specialty store. Ask the store folks if they can arrange some for you.
Or look out for a spice farm in your corner of the world. Peppercorns grow in humid and tropical areas near the equator. Florida, for example, is a good place to grow green peppercorn.
Or on your travels to South Asia, you can try to get green peppercorn and brine them while you are there with vinegar and salt.
That's what I did.
I got my green peppercorns from a spice farm in Goa and brined them. Then we started to grow black peppercorn vines along a betel nut tree.
Eventually, we got a hybrid bush peppercorn plant (it grows in a bush instead of a vine) and since that, we have been harvesting pepper drupes every year.
You can purchase a live pepper plant and try to grow your own pepper. Spoiler alert: It takes years for black pepper drupes to grow.
💭 FAQs
No, you need fresh green peppercorn to brine and pickle.
You require green raw and fresh Piper nigrum drupes for this particular recipe. Not, dried pepper, not long pepper, not pink pepper, not white pepper, not alligator pepper.
I live in north central Victoria. We have huge peppercorn trees here! Some produce a large amount of red berries while some do not fruit at all. I am given to understand that the fruiting ones are of European origin. Can you let me know if these berries can be preserved?
Hi Bryan. The Peppercorn in this post is a creeper and not a tree. In India, you also get Peppercorn bush plants, but they don't grow that high into trees, they stay bushy and have peppercorns on the branches. The one in the pictures, and the one you get in stores to flavor your food, is mainly from India. It grows into a vine, as seen in the image. The ones you talk about is an entirely different plant, and it has nothing to do with the plant in this post.
The peppercorn tree produces pink pepper. It's a different plant, and it's from Southern America originally. Pink Pepper can be dried and used to flavor your food. It's great with chocolate and in desserts. You can also add it to green and black peppercorn to season your meats. I used pink pepper here to make chocolate pink pepper cookies.
What’s the shelf life for brined peppercorns?
10 to 12 months if stored in your fridge.
I’d like to make these, how would dried green peppercorns work? Would they be alright?
I don't think that you can use dried green peppercorns to make this. It just won't be the same. You can try but dried ones taste different and if you pickle them they will not taste the same way as you would expect from preserved and brined green peppercorn.
Sorry to criticise, as your recipe is very informative, but unfortunately there are several types of vinegar and salt,
I’ve come to the conclusion over many years it’s always best to be specific. Kind regards Chris.
Thanks for the question Chris. For the vinegar pick a vinegar that has less than 5% acidity or else add some water to thin it down. I like to use mild vinegar such as rice vinegar or mild distilled white vinegar. It shouldn't be overpowering and the vinegar can be your choice.
For the salt, I tend to use sea salt. Not the brown one but something finer such as fleur de sel or white thin sea salt. Table salt would do the trick too.
Step 5: "Close the jar with the lid and keep out for two days. Refrigerate after three days and use in your food whenever you like." So, should the glass be left out for two or three days? Thanks for the advice and I send greetings from the Czech Republic!
Hi Petr, Yes so what I mean is that after closing the lid you need to keep it in your kitchen counter for 2 days. The 3rd day, place it into the fridge. This is because the flavors need to infuse first but then you also want to preserve it, hence why you need to place it into the fridge after 3 days.
Thank you so much. My father grows peppercorns on the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland Australia and I have gone from dried peppercorns which are sooooo nice to these delicious pickled ones. They are Devine.
Hi Jody, so glad to read that you are enjoying your pickled green peppercorns as much as I do. btw you are so lucky that your father grows peppercorns! That's amazing! 😀
Thank you for this recipe. I have just harvested the motherload of peppercorns after waiting a long time and usually just air dry them to use like normal pepper. This time I have brined them using your recipe and very excited to see how they turn out.
Lovely! I just did the opposite and dried a whole batch to make black pepper for a change. Let us know how yours turned out later on.