A quick and easy recipe for smokey, sweet, delicious roasted peppers.
I used to buy roasted red peppers in a jar all the time. For some reason, I was intimidated by the idea of roasting them myself. And when I finally did try to do it, the first few recipes were so time consuming I thought “why does anyone spend time on this?!?”. But then I figured out a much easier and quicker way to do it, and now I always roast them myself.
I love the way they come out – smokey, sweet and so tasty. And they are incredibly versatile, you can use them in salad dressings, hummus, sauces, soups, pasta, pretty much everything savory really. And, as I mentioned in the Mexican-inspired pizza recipe, they are also super healthy, providing lots of vitamin A, C, B6 and E as well as more than 30 different carotenoids.
Ingredients
- 1 organic pepper (organic is important*)
- An oven (works with a toaster oven too)
- Non-stick foil
- A bowl
- Something to cover the bowl with
Instructions
- Rinse the pepper, cut it in half and remove the stem, ribs and all the seeds.
- With your hands, try to make each half as flat as possible (you’ll have to break the edges a bit).
- Put the halves skin side up on a baking pan lined with nonstick foil.
- Broil on the top rack for around 20 minutes.
- When the skins are very charred (they’ll be more charred on top, but that’s fine), take them out and put in the bowl (I use a stainless steel one, putting something that hot in plastic makes me nervous because of BPA). Cover the bowl tightly and let sit for half an hour or so.
- Once the peppers are cool enough to handle, take them out and pull the skins off. That’s it! You now have a roasted pepper.
Notes
The Importance of Organic Peppers
If you can’t find fresh organic peppers, it is better to buy them already roasted in a jar (should still be organic though). Peppers are one of the vegetables with the highest levels of pesticide residues. The USDA Pesticide Data Program tested and found 49 of them to be exact, including known carcinogens, hormone disruptors and neurotoxins. So make sure to always buy peppers organic, or even better, biodynamically grown.
For ideas on how to use the roasted pepper, see the Mexican-inspired Pizza and Mexican-inspired brunch quiche posts.
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