How To: Roast Peppers

I am ashamed to admit that for years I bought roasted peppers in a jar. I never even considered roasting them myself. I guess I figured it was too time consuming and difficult in some way. Recently I was at a friends house and we were watching a cooking show where the woman roasted peppers and I realized how simple it is, not to mention how much better the flavor is when you roast them yourself.

This year I planted a bell pepper seedling in our garden and it went crazy! At one point there were 14 peppers on it! Needless to say we have had plenty of bell peppers to eat all summer so I have gotten very good at roasting them.

You can either roast peppers on an outdoor grill or indoors in the oven. See the instructions below that best suit your cooking choice. The instructions are the same after step 1. Also this recipe is for 1 pepper but the instructions are the same no matter how many peppers you roast. There is very little active time, the real catch here is starting the peppers first before you start the rest of your recipe because they need about 20 minutes to cook and 20 minutes to cool.

Makes: 1 roasted pepper

Preparation time: 30m
Cooking time: 30m
Total time: 50m

Ingredients:

Equipment: oven or grill

Instructions:

  1. If using a grill: heat it to high and brush the grates with some vegetable oil to keep the peppers from sticking.
  2. If using the oven: Preheat to 450ºF/232ºC and line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum. Put the peppers on the baking sheet.
  3. Place the peppers in the oven/on the grill and turn about every 5 minutes so that they blister and blacken on all sides.
  4. Small peppers (2-4”) will take about 15 minutes, while large peppers (6-8”) will take about 20 minutes.
  5. Remove the peppers and place them in bowl. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let them sit for about 20 minutes. While they cool they will steam themselves which make the skins very easy to remove.
  6. Once the peppers are cool enough to touch you should be able to easily remove the skins using your fingers. Discard the skins, the stem and the seeds. Now you can use the pepper any way you like. Try them sliced and mixed into INLINE-LINK-START title="Pepperoni Primavera" href="http://www.wafflehearts.com/recipes/pepperoni-primavera" target="blank">pasta primavera INLINE-LINK-END or if you roasted 2 red bell peppers you can make my INLINE-LINK-START title="Cheese-less Cheese Sauce" href="http://www.wafflehearts.com/recipes/cheese-less-cheese-sauce" target="blank">Cheese-less Cheese Sauce INLINE-LINK-END.