Title: How To Handle Peppers
Categories: Vegetable
Yield: 1 Servings
Many recipes calling for peppers--sweet bell or fiery chilie--bury the
elusive line "roasted, peeled, seeded and..." in the ingredient listed.
There are many ways to accomplish this task. No caveats are necessary for
sweet bell peppers, but exercise certain precautions in handling chilies
containing potent oils. Old-fashioned cookbooks call for wearing rubber
gloves when handling chilies. Instead, cut hot chilies on a plate that can
be washed in the dishwasher, wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water
after handling them, and never touch your skin until you've washed your
hands. And don't handle hot chilies under running water, since that spreads
the oil vapors upward to your eyes. Achieving perfect peppers is a two-part
process, heating and then cooling them, so the skin separates from the
flesh. For recipes like pepper salad, in which the peppers should retain
firmness, it is better to roast and chill them quickly. For recipes such as
a sauce in which the pepper is pureed, more tender peppers are desirable.
When roasting hot chilies, make a small slit at the stem since they
occasionally explode. Here are ways to heat peppers: o For a large number
of peppers, and to retain the most texture, lower peppers gently into 375F
oil and fry until the skin blisters. Turn them with tongs when one side is
blistered, since they will float on the surface. This method is also the
most effective if peppers are not perfectly shaped, since it is difficult
to get the heat from a broiler into the folds of peppers. Here are other
ways to heat peppers: o Place the peppers 6 inches from the broiler element
of the stove, turning them with tongs until all surfaces are charred. o
Place the peppers 4 inches above a hot charcoal or gas grill, and turn them
until the skin is charred. o Place a wire cake rack over a gas or electric
burner. o Set the gas or electric burner at the highest temperature, and
use tongs to turn the peppers on a wire cake rack until all surfaces are
charred. o Place the peppers on a rack on a cookie sheet in a 550F oven
until totally blistered. Only use this method for a sauce or other recipe
in which the peppers are destined to be pureed. For cooling peppers, the
options are not as plentiful: o Place them in ice water. This stops the
cooking action immediately, and cools them enough to peel them within a
minute. o The alternative is to wrap the peppers in a plastic bag and allow
them to steam. This separates the flesh from the skin, but it will be 20
minutes or more before they can be handled. If you wrap peppers in a
plastic bag to cool, they will soften in the time it takes for them to cool
enough to be handled. There are no choices to make for the final step: Pull
the skin off and remove the seeds. The bell can now be rinsed under cold
water. From Prodigy Cooking Class