How to Make Roasted Peppers the Right Way

How to Make Roasted Peppers the Right Way Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with a very basic demo today, fire roasting peppers. I know you’ve seen this on TV before but they don’t show you the whole thing. They just show you how to burn the skin off and then rinse it off and then you think you’re done, but you’re not. See, what we’re doing here is we’re roasting the skin off. We’re burning the skin off, but we’re also cooking the pepper. See, the skin will turn black and blister off pretty quickly just in a couple of minutes. But that doesn’t cut it because the pepper underneath, it will still be raw. So I’m going to move this around. I’m going to char this all over but I want to make sure I’m giving it a good three or four minutes per side. I don’t just want a black, I want kind of a gray-white skin and I want the pepper—see that, watch it, oops, shooting star, make a wish. I wish that Bobby Flay has to do an Iron Chef and there’s no chipotle pepper. Okay, I know you’re not supposed to say the wish out loud. So make sure you char this on all sides. I also charred the top and the bottom and I want the pepper—you see I can feel it with my tongs. I want the pepper to feel a little bit soft before I take it off. Again, blackening the skin is one thing. I want the pepper roasted. I want it cooked. Here’s also what’s going to help. We’re going to put this in an air-tight Ziploc bag. Alright, so put it in your Ziploc bag. Now, here’s the funny part. I’m trying to get the air out because the hot pepper is expanding the air and it’s like I’m battling physics here. But anyway, squeeze out a little bit of the air and then zip it up. And then let that come to room temperature. And as it sits in that bag at room temperature, there is a lot of heat in there, alright? And that’s going to basically keep roasting the pepper and it’s going to also help infuse the flesh with that beautiful smoky flavor. So I throw it in the fridge for about half hour after it comes to room temperature and then I’m ready to peel and I’m going to have a perfectly roasted, delicious, smoky bell pepper. It could be red. It could be yellow. It could be green, whatever. Now, here’s some more controversy. Some chefs and these are chefs that have like 30 assistants helping them, they don’t want you to rinse this under water to take off the skin. They believe and I’m not going to totally disagree with them, but they believe that if you rinse the pepper, it rinses off the flavor. That may be true if you rinse it right after you roast it. But since this sat in that bag for a while, it sat for like half hour at room temperature and then in the fridge, it’s got plenty of flavor, believe me. So they’ll have the poor cooks wipe the skin off with a paper towel and then run a knife over it. I don’t have a big problem with that. It kind of works okay for the outside, but when you get to the inside, then I kind of give up on their system because here’s the deal. That looks good but now I’m going to cut this open and they want those cooks to scrape out the seeds and all the stuff inside without rinsing it. I don’t know how they do it because it’s just too big of a mess. So cut it open, take out the seed pod. Again, you’re always working with a sharp knife, and then they’ll have those poor cooks scrape off those seeds and they’re kind of sticky and gooey and it’s just a big mess. So do you know where I’m going? That’s right, the sink. By the way, it was easier doing a water sound effect than moving my camera to the sink, so this is me washing off the peppers and there you go. So anyway, I don’t think there’s a big deal rinsing the pepper off, especially if you used my method with the bag and let it sit for a while. Take a sharp knife. Remove any other remaining whiteness you see. It’s just a little thicker on those spots and we don’t want any of that white stuff messing up the color. I’m going to cut this into three squares and then—pardon the geometry lesson, but we’re going to make diamonds instead of squares, why? Because it looks cooler. So cut this into like quarter inch strips and instead of going at a 90-degree angle to make your traditional diced bell pepper or even smaller, they call it--pardon my French. We’re going to hold the knife at a 45-degree angle and if you notice, it’s just like dicing but when I’m done, I’m going to have these beautiful, cool diamond shapes and now you can call them jewels instead of cubed or square peppers. Alright, does it taste the same? Of course. Does it look cool? Yes. So there’s a little trick for your to impress your foodie friends. Go to this site, read the article and anyway, most of all, enjoy!