Roasting Red Peppers
Roasted peppers are a useful and tasty addition to your fridge and a good way to shrink a lot of peppers into just a little amount of high-flavour yumminess. Occasionally you can get peppers on sale and roasting a big bag of them is a great way to use them.
You can use a BBQ or a gas stove to roast peppers (see video for basic how-to) but we are using an oven for this recipe because most people have ovens.
This takes a bit of time but it's mostly hands-off time so you can do other things.
Once your peppers are roasted you can keep them in the fridge and use them in a sandwich (great with cream cheese), on an antipasti/charcuterie plate, in a dip or spread like Ajvar or Muhammara, blended into a pasta sauce or pizza topping...
- bell peppers and/or chili peppers (as many as you have, doesn't matter what colour they are)
- Prep
Wash the peppers and place them on a baking sheet. Pop it in the hot oven, up at the top where the broiler element is. Get the baking sheet as close to the broiler as you can without the element touching the peppers.
- Roast
Keep an eye (and a nose!) on the oven. When you see that one side gets charred, flip the peppers about a 1/4 turn and char the next side. You are looking for brown/black on all sides of the pepper.
- Steam
When the peppers are charred and collapsing, immediately put them in a bowl and put a plate over the top of the bowl to trap the steam inside. Let sit until cool - about 30 minutes or so.
- Peeling and seeding
Peel off most of the charred skin (it's okay if there are a few little bits). Also remove the seeds and membranes.
You can use the peppers right away or you can put them in a container in the fridge either with or without a slick of olive oil over the top. Keep in mind that these peppers don't last very long - a few days, not weeks, even with the olive oil on top.
