Red pepper v. Sweet pepper

[Binky]

We have a weekly delivery from Tesco.

Our usual red peppers have been substituted with sweet peppers.

Does anyone know what the difference is?

We use red peppers for stir fry, in a roast veg tray, piedmont pepper recipe by Delia Smith, and in a Mediterranean fish soup.

Can we still do these with sweet peppers?

[PatsyMFagan]

Are they the long pointed ones?

I would say interchangeable, but others might know better.

All I know is they are more expensive

[Binky]

They haven't arrived yet- we get an email telling us of items unavailable or substituted so that we can refuse at the door.

Looking at an American website, they call 'bell peppers' sweet peppers so maybe they're the same/interchangeable?

[Earthmaiden]

I thought they were just ordinary peppers or the pointed ones (rather than hot peppers of various kinds). I can't think of any peppers which would be unpleasantly sweet to add to savoury dishes. I love the pointed ones.

[scullion]

i think they are the long pointy ones that come in packs of two or three - slightly sweeter than ordinary 'bell' peppers and interchangeable in cooking. really nice but more expensive.

[mistakened]

If they are the long pointy peppers they will be fine. I use them all the time. Ours have a better flavour than bell peppers.

Moira

[Stokey Sue]

Looking at the Tesco web site, sweet peppers are smallish ripe bell peppers - not necessarily red, the pack shown has two red and one yellow pepper in it
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/p ... /295673143
Should be fine

Odlly when I first started cooking I called these capsicums sweet peppers, and first encountered bell pepper I thought it was an Americanism - I think both Elizabeth David and Fanny Craddock said sweet pepper. No rhyme or reason to these things.,

[Smitch]

When I was buying peppers recently, I noticed two different packets. The one without a green pepper was labelled as ‘sweet peppers’

[Badger's Mate]

I had always thought it meant ‘not hot’ peppers, in those days green or red, that weren’t chillies. Chillies were little dried red things that occasionally turned up in pickling spice when you did your onions for Christmas.

I’m pretty sure bell peppers is an Americanism for the usual sort but there probably isn’t a watertight definition of sweet peppers so they could be ripe ones, as Smitch observed, or a marketing term for one of the other shapes, either to make them sound nicer, or to reassure customers who might worry that they were a type of chilli.

[Earthmaiden]

Looking at the Sainsburys website they do seem to be red, orange and yellow bell peppers or red or yellow pointed peppers. There are also tubs of very small red, yellow and orange peppers (which usually have no or fewer seeds) called 'Sweet baby peppers'.

What did you get Binky?

[Suffs]

When I first came across bell peppers in the mid 60s … the first one I ever saw was given to me to draw by my art teacher when I was about 13 … so 1965 ish? It was definitely called a sweet pepper … think this was so that the British public weren’t frightened to try them … thinking they were like chillies. They were either red or green and eaten raw in salads. No one knew you could cook them! They were marketed as a salad vegetable along with the tomatoes.

[Stokey Sue]

They featured in dishes on High Street Chinese restaurant and takeaway menus in the mid 1960s - or at least they did round Portsmouth which had a significant Cantonese population.
I still like beef with green peppers, though I, and most Chinese restaurants, make it a bit differently now.