Pepper Roastin'.

Remember this from yesterday? Today, we are going to look at one way to roast peppers...red, green, hot, mild, sweet. The whole sordid lot. There they are, top right, having been picked minutes earlier from my garden. I have found that they are easiest to peel after roasting if they are fresh. The fresher, the better.

My mother in law works at a hospital and gave me a surgical tray one year for Christmas. It was seriously one of the most useful and beloved Christmas gift ever received. It is about the size of a half cookie sheet, shaped like a jelly roll pan with higher sides and just perfect for this, or most any, cooking or baking job.

My broiler is in the oven as opposed to a separate unit below; turn that baby on and put all the peppers in for some roastin.

Now, there are a lot of different ways or locations to roast peppers.

In Bulgaria, every fall at my bloc apartment building, people would roast over open fires and do multiple humongoid bags in one day. They were making lutenitsa, among other things, which is a roasted pepper spread.

When I lived in Santa Fe, I witnessed (in a parking lot of all places) a huge hopper for the green "Hatch" chili peppers being roasted over, again, an open fire. This hopper was like a Bingo numbers cage on steroids. It was made out of wire and was on a rotisserie that could constantly be turned to jumble the peppers so they could all get flame licked.

I have also seen then done on a grill, but this seems to take longer if the grill on top is keeping the peppers from direct flame. Think of the time to roast a golden brown marshmallow vs. the nuclear option that produces a flaming ball of molten mallow.

In a pinch, I have also roasted a pepper over the gas stove burner with metal tongs. Don't judge.

This is after a couple minutes. They are not ready to turn yet, you want the side to be completely black. You may hear some popping; that is the skin of the pepper bursting open to release the steam that is being built up inside the skin. If you are able to be patient and sit and watch the peppers during this first stage, you will see the skin bubble and form a blister before it turns black.

Now, these are mostly ready to turn to a different side. You can see some of the pepper juice and water from inside the pepper that has leaked out through the burst skin. Unavoidable....or at least I haven't figured out how to avoid it. I am thinking that turning more might prevent the skin from bursting, but then I am not building up the heat in the oven because I am constantly opening and closing the door.

Maybe it wouldn't make a diff.

This is after turning multiple times to get all surfaces blackened. You can see all the juices that have leaked out have also blackened.

Time to carefully move them to the paper bag. They can be pretty fragile, especially if they are stuck to the pan.

Any paper bag that can fit all the peppers and can still close can do. I usually use a paper lunch bag. If you are going mega-batch, you could potentially use a paper grocery bag. This is a bag from the liquor store that is a little bigger than a lunch bag. (Gin, if you must know.)

They don't need any special treatment at this point, other than having the bag closed.

Then, let them sit in a place that is out of the way for 15-ish minutes.

Unless you are me and you forget them because you are also in the process of peeling a butt load of tomatoes at the same time.

No matter.

The beauty of using the paper bag is that I just rip it open and make a place mat for the peeling stage. The peppers are soft, pliant and still warm at this point.

You want to make sure that you are using a variety of pepper that has pretty thick walls....peppers that have a lot of "meat" on them. Then there will be something left after you have peeled the skin a way. If the variety is too thin, you peel a hole into the pepper when you peel and there is nothing left.

The same thing will happen if you roast too long on one side...there will just be charred everything instead of peppers that have been roasted.

These peeled very nicely. It is a huge mess, but totally worth it. There was actually one pepper that the entire skin peeled off in one huge piece. I was going to take a picture but my fingers were all gunked up.

Make sure to take the seeds and the top off. You can take the veins that run up and down the sides, but sometimes I leave those in. If you have some seeds that stick to the peppers, it is no big whoop.

You won't suffer any catastrophic side effects or anything.

Now, I just have to soak the pan. Most of this will come off with soaking and scrubbing. I pretty much just use this pan for roasting, so I am not too concerned with getting every little bit off.

If you are the type to be concerned with things of this nature, use an old pan or one you have already designated for roasting. Don't use your all time fave. You will have tragedy.