Roasted Red Peppers

Yes, I brought home huge sweet red peppers from the Wednesday Farmer's Market also.  They were just so big, so red, so firm, and cheap... who could resist? Now as sweet and delicious as these peppers are, their skin is paper-like and never seems to soften even when stewed a long time. So they needed to have the skin removed.  This is done by charring the outside black; the skin will then separate from the pepper and slide off. 

Last time I used the broiler, and that worked well, but this time I decided to see if using the outdoor grill would be an even easier method.  I heated the grill nice and hot before laying on my red peppers.  You may notice 2 smaller purple peppers.  These were a couple of surprise peppers I found on my own pepper bushes.  I assumed I could roast them as well.  Well, I grilled and turned, grilled and turned for over a half hour.  The peppers softened and sizzled.  Some of the skin charred, but not as much black as I got with the broiler.  When I decided I just didn't want to cook the peppers any more, I transferred them to a large bowl. I covered the bowl to trap the steam from the peppers because this helps the skin loosen from the flesh.

After another 30 minutes or so, when the peppers were cool enough to handle and the steam had time to do its trick, I began to peel away the skin.  Usually this is pretty easy - cut them in half, remove the seeds and stem, and slide the skin away from the flesh. Not today.  Apparently I did not have a good enough char on the outside.  The blacker the skin, the easier it came off, but there were way too many places that I had to struggle with a pairing knife to remove the skin.  And it did not want to budge!  Lesson to self: stick with the broiler. 

Another interesting discovery was that the purple peppers turned green when roasted.  They tasted like green peppers, and their skin did not want to separate from the flesh at all.  I will treat these purple beauties like a green pepper from now on.  They would be better served raw.

Finally after fighting with the skin for a while, I could cut the roasted peppers into strips.  I froze them first on a tray (note the parchment paper under the peppers).  Then I broke them up with my fingers and put them into a freezer bag for long term storage.  Now I can take out just a few at a time.  Roasted peppers add so much color and flavor to all sorts of recipes.  Next week I plan to get more of these beauties because I have a roasted red pepper bisque recipe that I'm just dying to try.  More on that later.