Fire-roasting Peppers – Beauty is way more than skin deep!

Today’s clip is a very basic kitchen technique on roasting and dicing a bell pepper. While you may have seen it done on TV before, I want to make sure you understand that you should be doing much more than simple burning off the skin. Every time I see this demonstrated, the chef simple blackens the pepper and removes the skin, either by rinsing or scraping. The problem, as I’ll explain in the video recipe, is that the skin blackens fairly quickly, while the pepper is still uncooked. I believe that you not only want to remove the skin, but you also want to roast the pepper over the fire to soften the texture and sweeten the flesh. Also, the little trick I show you at the end on how to get “diamonds” instead of the boring old squares is a nice technique to add to your rapidly expanding repertoire.

Now a special message for all my fans that have electric stoves…I’m Sorry. You can’t do this on an electric burner. You can sort of do it under the electric broiler, but it’s not as easy. You’ll just have to go outside and fire up the old grill. If you’re just doing one or two, you could use your Crème Brulee torch. Or, the next time your visiting your friend with the gas range you can bring along a bag of peppers. I’m sure they won’t mind at all. Finally, if you get my Bobby Flay joke in the middle of this video, then you watch way too much FoodTV. Enjoy!