Bell peppers are the sweetest of the capsicums and definitely the most versatile. Here’s 5 facts about bell peppers.
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Bell peppers have the highest Vitamin C of any fruit or vegetable. In fact, it’s 3 times more than oranges!
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Like quite a few other vegetables, they are botanically classified as a fruit because they contain seeds and grow from the flower of the plant.
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All bell peppers start out as green. Yellow, orange, red, and purple are all stages of ripening, and offer different levels of sweetness.
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Peppers got the name from the Greek word, pipari, meaning the black spice. They were given their name from being spicy, like black pepper (which was a valuable commodity in the 17th century). Bell peppers look like other varieties, so the name was a good fit when Columbus found them in the Caribbean, though they are believed to originate in Central and South America.
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Like other capsicums (peppers), they can be dried and powdered, which is what makes paprika. Bell peppers are the only kind that has no capsaicin, therefore they have no heat or spice.
