Learning how to pan roast peppers will change your salsas, your burgers, your breakfasts and more, for the better. Jalapenos, poblanos, serranos & sweet bell peppers – roast them all! Roasting fresh peppers brings out the best of their personality and adds a nice smoky, charred flavor.
How to Pan Roast Peppers
It’s kind of fun to have a cooking technique where your goal is to burn your food. Takes the pressure off! Roasted peppers have a delicious smoky, charred flavor that goes perfectly with their natural sweetness. That charred flavor gives a boost to lots of dishes like salsa, sweet potato hash, pastas, sandwiches and burgers, dips, you name it! Once you know how to pan roast peppers, you can use the technique on any kind of pepper, sweet or spicy. Another benefit of roasting is that it lets you easily peel off most of the tough, sometimes bitter skin so all you have left is the delicious, roasted pepper. Roasting spicy peppers will also tame their heat just a bit.
The Ingredient
Peppers! That’s all you need. Poblanos, jalapenos, serranos, sweet bell peppers, whatever kind of fresh peppers you have can be roasted, peeled and added to your favorite recipes.
Pan Roasting
There are a few different ways to roast peppers. If you have a gas stove, you can hold the peppers over the gas flame (with some tongs!) until they’re charred. You can also char them under the broiler in your oven. Since I don’t have a gas stove, and I like to be able to see the peppers as they cook, my favorite technique is to pan roast them. All you have to do is place the peppers in a dry pan and turn the heat to medium. As the pan heats up, the peppers will start to char. It will take a few minutes for the blackening to begin – patience is a virtue in this process! Give them an occasional turn to char on all sides.
When I’m making roasted tomato blender salsa, I pan roast a couple of jalapenos (above). When I’m making chicken and sweet potato hash or stuffed peppers, I like to roast a poblano (see below).
Once your peppers are nice and charred, you’ll place them in a bowl and cover them. This will steam the peppers as they cool down and also loosen the skin which will make them much easier to peel. Don’t try to peel them right out of the pan, you’ll get frustrated, and you’ll burn your fingers. Cover them for 10-15 minutes and you should be ready to go.
Peeling and Chopping
Once the peppers have cooled down, you can peel off most of the skin. It’s fine to leave some of the blacken bits on the pepper, these are what you call flavor! You can use a paring knife to get under the skin, or just your fingers, whatever works best for you.
Once your pepper is peeled, you can start preparing it for your recipe. However you’re going to prep it, you’ll want to core and seed the pepper first. (Nobody enjoys chewing on those little seeds!) Take your sharp paring knife and cut around the top of the pepper so you can pull it out with most of the seeds. Then slice the pepper open and remove the ribs and the rest of the seeds.
The next step is up to you and your recipe. For my sweet potato hash recipe I wanted a large dice on my roasted poblano. But if you’re going to use the poblanos for stuffed peppers, you can stop here and fill ‘um up. If you’re making burgers, you can cut the pepper in half and lay each piece on top.
If you do want to dice the pepper, start by cutting long slices.
Next you’ll dice up the slices.
Then you can add the diced roasted poblanos to a sweet potato hash!
And the roasted jalapenos became the star of some really easy and delicious roasted jalapeno blender salsa.
The Payoff
Now these are some good reasons to learn how to pan roast peppers!
Oh, do I love jalapenos.
Tools I like for Pan Roasting Peppers
- Nonstick frying pan because you won’t use any oil. You can also use cast iron.
- Cling wrap for steaming the peppers. How cute and easy to use are these refillable plastic wrap dispensers?
- A sharp paring knife if you don’t have one already. For peeling the charred skin and slicing & dicing the peppers.
Disclaimer: any links to products in this post may be affiliate links. This means I would get a small commission if the product was purchased. I only link to products I like and use myself, or are similar to what I use. Thanks for your support!
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How to Pan Roast Peppers
Description
Roasting fresh peppers brings out the best of their personality and also adds a nice smoky, charred flavor.
Ingredients
- Peppers! Whatever kind of pepper your recipe calls for.
Instructions
- Place your peppers in a dry saute pan or cast iron pan. Heat the pan over medium high heat on the stovetop.
- Leave the peppers until they start to char, then turn to another side. Keep turning every 5 minutes or so until most of the pepper is charred black.
- Place the peppers into a bowl and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the peppers steam in the bowl for 10-15 minutes.
- Remove the peppers from the bowl and place on a cutting board. You’ll see that the skin of the pepper will peel off fairly easily. Scrape as much of this skin off the pepper as you can. Don’t worry about leaving some of the charred skin on, that will add flavor!
- Cut the tops of the peppers off then cut open the peppers to remove the seeds and ribs.
- Now you can cut the peppers into whatever you need for your recipe!
