Easy Roasted Red Peppers

Do you get carried away buying peppers and wonder how you are going to use them? I do things like this all the time.

Roasted Red Peppers are so easy to make you will wonder why you ever bought them in a jar or off the salad bar. They don’t take any skill and there are only a few tricks that make it easier. I have a pepper roaster that sits on top the stove grate but you don’t need one.

In the picture above you can still see red on the peppers, that is not the way you want them to look, but it is prettier. You want the peppers to be a close to evenly black as you can you get them. The first time I made them I thought they were too burnt, but that is perfect.

Red bell peppers are full of nutrition and contain more vitamin C than citrus fruit. Vitamin C is a powerful antioxidant that is linked to a reduction in many common western diseases.

Easy Roasted Red Peppers
Makes 4 peppers

Ingredients:

4 roasted red peppers
water to cover
¼ teaspoon of ascorbic acid powder

Directions:

Clean your peppers well before roasting.

Roast the peppers over a grill or the grate of your stove set to medium high heat. I have also used a cake cooling rack on top my stove and that worked well too. Cook the peppers until they are evenly black. I found this took about 2 minutes per side or 10 minutes overall. By charring all the skin it will easily slip off the pepper after it steams.

Move the cooked peppers to a large bowl and cover with a lid or plastic wrap. Allow the peppers to stand in the bowl for at least 10 minutes so that they steam and soften. The skins should easily slide off when you pinch the pepper. Cut off the top of the pepper and remove the seeds. Don’t wash the pepper to get out the seeds, use your hands. You don’t want to rinse off the remaining char it has a lot of good flavor.

Put the peppers in a jar with a lid and cover with water and the ascorbic acid. The peppers will keep in your refrigerator for at least a week. I use them so frequently they are gone before they have gotten any older.

If you don’t have powdered ascorbic acid you can also freeze the peppers for longer storage. I have purchased the ascorbic acid at my local health food store as well as the canning section of my grocery store.

Nutritional Information (per pepper):

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 45.14
Calories From Fat (9%) - 3.95

Total Fat - 0.44g
Saturated Fat - 0.04g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 7.59mg
Potassium - 307.19mg
Total Carbohydrates - 8.79g
Fiber - 3.05g
Sugar - 6.13g
Protein - 1.44g

Comments:

These are so quick and easy to make. I like to combine the red, orange and yellow peppers and of course I buy organic peppers since they are one of the dirty dozen.