Bell Pepper

Look at a bell pepper before you buy it, not after. The skin should be tight, glossy, almost drumming back at you when you tap it with a finger. Once it softens or wrinkles, no amount of cooking brings that snap back.

Smell the stem end. A good pepper smells green and faintly sweet there. If it smells sharp or fermented, put it down.

Now, some people say a green pepper and a red one are the same ingredient, and you can swap one for the other without thinking twice. No! Bite into a raw green pepper next to a raw red one and your mouth will tell you everything: the green one is sharp, almost grassy, while the red one is round and sweet on the tongue. Hold both in your hand and smell them before you even cut in — the red one carries a sweeter smell, the kind that tells you what's coming when you bite.

This is why swapping green peppers into a dish that calls for red ones backfires. You expect sweetness and get a bitter edge instead, especially in raw salads and salsas, where there's no cooking to soften that sharpness. Taste the pepper raw before it goes in the bowl, and you'll know which one you're holding.