I am a bit of a self-admitted fresh ground pepper fiend.  I love the stuff and when you start tasting it in its varied forms you learn a lot about it. One of the biggest things that you notice is much like coffee, fresh ground pepper is the best pepper.  While it may be nice to have a little pepper dish sitting out for seasoning ground pepper does go stale.  Another kitchen temptation to resist is this stuff:

Pre-ground pepper is the worst.  Other than saving you a few hand cranks on the pepper grinder this stuff does nothing for you.  The flavor is flatter.  It goes stale more quickly, and  costs more on a per ounce basis than fresh ground pepper.  In theory we have done a good job of telling you what not to do, but what should you be buying/using.  We first things first a good pepper grinder.  These are unfortunately expensive, set yourself an alert and snap up an adjustable Peugeot Pepper Grinder when they go on  sale.  I’ve had my current one for over a decade and it looks new.  My mom has had hers for 40 years.  The internal mechanism patent is 200 years old.  This tool stands the test of time.  Which it better, because even on sale these can run  $60 or more.  My personal choice was for the 8.75 inch which as a pair set me back $60 during a 40% off sale.  If you are looking to save a few $$ the 7 inch is probably the ideal choice.

Some toys to buy:

From here you need to look at what goes in the pepper grinder – for my tastes I like a bland of multi-colored peppercorns as I find it develops a more layered and rounded flavor vs straight black pepper which can be much hotter.  A Blend that looks something like this is what you are shooting for:

Using a blended variety of pepper corns will give you more depth of flavor and more layering in your dishes.  I do appreciate all of this sounds like some work – but once done it improves every dish you make, every night.