Roasted Peppers

Background: I grow peppers and sometimes I have a bumper crop. Like many moves, this is both a prepped ingredient and a preservation technique. Roasted peppers are a great ingredient to have on hand. It’s not complicated and the same techniques work with any pepper, regardless where it falls on the Scoville scale.

1. Get a bunch of peppers or grab one that’s about to start getting wrinkly.
2. Pick the method of heat that’s most convenient for you:
   • Electric stove
   • Gas stove
   • Broiler
   • Wood fired grill
   • Coals
   • Blowtorch
3. If indoors, turn on the hood.
4. Unless you are broiling or grilling, you want the pepper touching the heat source or the heat source touching the pepper. Turn with tongs until you get all sides of the pepper.
5. If using a thick walled pepper like a jalapeño or bell pepper, completely char the skin of the pepper so that it’s black and flaking off. If using a thinned walled pepper like a habanero, just blister the skin as best you can.
6. Put the peppers directly in a glass bowl and put a heavy plate on top of it.
7. Go about your other prep work.
8. When the peppers are cool enough to handle carefully, make a slit all the way up the side to the stem. You should be able to grab the stem and most of the seeds and remove them in one piece.
9. Open up the destemmed, seeded pepper and scrape the remaining seeds off the flesh with the back your knife.
10. Flip the pepper over to its charred side and scrape the skin off.
11. Leave in large pieces, cut into strips, or dice.
12. Cover with salt and vinegar to pickle or refrigerate or freeze them as they are.

Why It Works

1. It’s best to do this when the peppers are fresh. The flavor is better and the skin comes off better. But if my options were to throw away a pepper in a couple of days or do this move now, I’m going do this move now regardless of wrinkles.
2. The method doesn’t change depending on heat source
   • Place the pepper directly on the coil burner or flattop burner. (I haven’t tried this with induction burners.)
   • Place the peppers directly over the flame. I use a wire rack or grill grate to position them on.
   • Place the peppers directly under the heating element.
   • These last two will change the flavor in nice ways and are my favorite. Any time I fire up the grill, campfire, I use the time before the fire is ready to cook my main meat or veg to flame roast peppers, char corn, or blister tomatoes. Otherwise, I feel like I’m wasting fuel.
   • Put the pepper directly onto coals, caveman style. This is the messiest method, but it works.
   • The blowtorch method could work if you wanted both blistered skin and a fruity raw-ish pepper taste. It’s not going to result in a steamed pepper the way the other methods will eventually.
3. It’s going to get smoky, but I find the smell pleasant.
4. With an open flame on a grill or firepit, it’s ok if the flame touches the pepper. For most live fire applications, cooks want coals, not flame. This might be an exception.
5. If you go too far you will end up burning the flesh of the pepper and the skin. This will result in a pepper that cannot be peeled in that spot.
6. You are using the residual heat from the pepper to steam the skin off and steam the flesh.
7. I don’t think you can go too long on this step unless you leave it in the danger zone (below 140 degrees) for several hours. It can be done in as little as 15 minutes or you can wait an hour.
8. A few seeds left on the pepper is better than rinsing the whole thing in the name of being thorough. That’s washing away flavor. Sometimes I rinse anyway if it’s a really really hot pepper.
9. If you’ve done it correctly, the skin should lay in flat sheet on the cutting board and be easy to cut into strips.
10. Leave some charred skin on for character.
11. Large pieces will let you decide on your final presentation later. Diced peppers will limit you to, well, diced peppers.
12. I like to do refrigerate some, pickle some, and freeze some.

Mods:

1. Because this move is so versatile and simple, the method mods are mostly related to the peppers you pick and your heat source, but if you’ve done this move and you want to put a twist on it, think about one ingredient or seasoning you could add to it that would change the ingredient. Consider the following:
   • Toss in oil and use in a dish right away, maybe something with goat cheese.
   • Add salt and pepper or seasonings to the peppers before you freeze and see how that changes the applications you think of using them for.
   • This method is the basis for many other stuffed pepper recipes like chile relleno. In fact, I think it should be the first step on all stuffed pepper recipes. It doesn’t have to be fried like chile relleno, but if you can’t cut through a stuffed pepper with a fork, then the pepper just becomes a garnish and a vessel for the stuffing and that’s a waste of a pepper.