Roasting Red Pepper

Roasting red peppers is pretty easy to do if a bit finicky at first. In this video I'm fumbling around with it quite a bit in part because I only do this once a year during harvest time, and this was the first time this year, and in part because silly me chose peppers which were largely inappropriate for roasting. You want to select peppers that are larger, and fairly regularly shaped. This video was taken a few weeks ago when peppers were just in season, and I got so excited that I just picked up a bushel without thinking about it first. Today I picked up about a half bushel of large, nicely formed peppers for my pasta sauce today, and I had them all roasted and peeled in no time at all - less than 2 hours.

What you want to do is simply core peppers and press them skin-up onto a lightly oiled baking sheet. Of course use olive oil. Then lightly oil the tops, and put them under the broiler in the oven on the top rack at 500F for 15 to 18 minutes. The tops have to be almost completely char black.

Then just take the tray out and let it cool, and peel the skins away and save the flesh. The skin comes away very easily in the places where it was burned black.