re: What herbs/spices have you never/rarely used?

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Is there a substantial taste difference

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Yup. I'll give you a great, easy recipe to taste it in.

Creamy potato and Tasso soup

4 cups chicken stock
4 large potatoes peeled and diced
1 whole brick of philly cream cheese
1/2 tsp season salt
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/4 tsp red pepper
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 lb Tasso cubed

Boil the potatoes in the stock until tender but not mushy. Pull them out and add the cubes of cream cheese. Boil until creamy. The trick here is to use a big pot so that you can hold a high rolling boil. If you can't hold that, the cheese will stay in big chunks. When creamy, toss in all the other stuff and simmer for a couple of hours.

This is my easy go to soup for cold days if I don't have time to make a gumbo.

The white pepper really gives a great umami to soups. It has no flavor relationship to black or red pepper, just a heat relationship. It is somewhere between black and red for heat. I put it in almost anything that simmers. It is not appropriate on finished food because it does bite fairly hard if it hits directly on your tongue.

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white pepper... It has no flavor relationship to black or red pepper, just a heat relationship. It is somewhere between black and red for heat.... It is not appropriate on finished food because it does bite fairly hard if it hits directly on your tongue.

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Agree.

I use it regularly also, mostly as part of a trio. I think of black pepper as hitting the palate first, followed by the white, with a warm sensation of the red pepper.

Useless info: white pepper as well as several other spices are sold in the small containers. Not because they are lesser used, but because they have a shorter shelf-life.

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Useless info: white pepper as well as several other spices are sold in the small containers. Not because they are lesser used, but because they have a shorter shelf-life.

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Hmmm. Did not know that. I thought it was because it was freaking expensive lol.