Roasted Peppers

The last big project was to make roasted red peppers. I actually chopped some of them up to keep frozen for other recipes, but roasted the rest.

I've often enjoyed the roasted red peppers in dishes, but they've always been such a pricey item to buy at the store that I've rarely used them. I was excited to find out that roasting peppers isn't that hard at all! You can do them on the grill or in the oven whichever fits your needs best. Since the weather hasn't gotten too cold yet here, I decided to use the grill.

It's as simple as washing them and placing them on the grill for several minutes, flipping them to get both sides charred. Once you have let them cool in a brown paper bag then peel the skin, empty the seeds and cut them into the pieces you want. Store them in a freezer bag or container.

There are a few tricks I learned:
-DON'T take the gloves off! Even if it's hard to work with them, some of the peppers we got were cayenne and my hands felt like they were literally burnt from peeling them.
-It's much easier to use large peppers for roasting. The smaller peppers aren't really worth the effort.
-It's a bit time consuming to deal with the peel (depending on how many you have--we had A LOT!)
-There is NO reason to pay BIG bucks on roasted peppers at the store. It's really not hard to do them at home, and you could even make just the amount you needed for a recipe if you don't have the storage space, for less then paying for the jar at the store.