Tips on Roasting Peppers and Why You Should
I have very strong feelings on food. In fact, some of my friends have even accused me of being a foodie.
So, why should you roast peppers, especially when you can just go out and buy them roasted?
What we have learned over the last twenty years here in America, that was already known all over the rest of the world, is that the quality of the dish is directly affected by the quality of the ingredients that goes into them. My mother has a garden in her back yard and when I eat the vegetables that she cooks there is nothing like them. Fresh. Fresh. Fresh. So, you can buy roasted peppers in jars or can, but be very careful about what they've put in the jar to preserve the peppers because this will affect the taste of the dish. Some use vinegar for instance which would definitely change the taste of the dish. Besides, roasting peppers is fun. So let's get on with it.
The method I advocate for roasting peppers is to simply turn on one of the burners on your stove and put a pepper on it. (What! You don't have gas? Simple. Move.) No, then you'd have to use the alternate method of roasting them in the oven.
As the peppers turn black, yes black and burnt looking, take a pair of tongs and rotate it till all sides look burnt and charred. You will probably notice the outer skin beginning to peel away from the interior skin. This is what you want and it's a good thing. This is when you want to put it in a paper bag and do the next pepper and so on till they are all done. To speed the process you could use all the burners on your stove, but be careful not to burn yourself in the process.
The reason that you want to place the peppers in a paper bag and then fold it closed is that it helps the process of the outer and inner skin separating. When you are peeling the peppers, one of the things that I find extremely helpful is to have a bowl of water in the sink. This is to help me periodically rinse the pepper off and also remove stubborn little bits from both the peppers and my hands. A note here is that you will not remove all the skin, so don't be frustrated if you don't. If you do, great! The point is to remove somewhere between 90 and 100 percent of the outer skin.
One of the other reasons that you should roast your own peppers is that you don't have to do it the day you're doing your sauce. I often will take a quart mason jar and put all the roasted peppers in the jar and throw it into the fridge. They will keep for about two weeks or so just like that. And if you have fresh roasted red peppers you might be tempted to make yourself a sandwich with some eggplant and mozzarella slices with a little arugula and aioli. Yum! And, if you get really ambitious, you can just roast a whole bunch of peppers and can them and always have them on hand. It's up to you. Mangia!