banana peppers - what to do with them all?
My banana pepper (sweet) plants are flourishing this year - I'm picking about a dozen peppers a day - pretty good for a handful of plants in my little container garden!
There's just two of us and we can't keep up! My coworkers are meat-and-potato-without-the-potato types, so it's hard to even push them off on others.
Other them putting them on a pizza, what can I do? I've tried them in a few iterations of pasta salads, and they don't work for me that way.
It breaks my heart to have such big, fresh peppers going to waste. We ultimately use about half of what I pick over the course of a week.
Any suggestions? I have a 90-minute-each-way commute - so I try to keep things simple.
alexajord
Jul 09, 2007 09:22AM
Roast, peel, and freeze for the taste of summer in winter?
Roast peppers are good in fritata, with sauteed onions and/or roast potatoes and a little fresh herbs and grated cheese of your preference.
Also, how about stuffed peppers? A large pan of these makes a couple of meals.
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Freeze them, straight up. Wash them and let them dry - then lay them out on a cookie sheet and stick them in the freezer overnight. Dump the frozen peppers into a freezer bags and put them back in . Pull them out whenever you need them - they'll still be great for pizza, sauces, etc.
Sounds like the container garden worked out for you - I've never had the discipline to keep up with them.
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A Southern favorite:
FRIED BANANA PEPPERS
Banana peppers, sliced in half and seeded
1 c. milk
1/4 c. flour
1 1/4 lb. cracker meal, unseasoned
1 1/4 tbsp. red pepper
Oil for deep frying
Cut peppers in half; soak in milk and flour. Combine cracker meal, flour and red pepper to make breading mixture. Remove peppers from milk and roll in breading. Deep fry at 350 degrees until golden brown.
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not that I've ever done this myself, but you could try brining or pickling them and then using them on sandwiches (I'm kind of obsessed with the pepper rings they have at Blimpie) or in salads. I'm so jealous!
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I was going to suggest pickling them as well.
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Sophia, Thats what we do also. They make pizza great also. Brining is WAY easy. I bring a quart of water to a boil w/ 2 T sea salt. While its cooling, I clean and chop my peppers and fill my wide mouth quart mason jars. Then I ladle the cold brine over the top to cover the peppers and put a plastic lid on the jar hand tight. I did a real pretty jar of these whole, with red onion rings and garlic cloves too.
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I usually do this to hot peppers but I don't see why it wouldn't work with sweet ones.
I slit up the side and pull out seeds using the back of an Asian soup spoon. Stuff with goat cheese and chorizo or a good blue cheese, cover in egg bath and panko and deep fry.
I serve with a sweet and sour.... oh so good.
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a sophisticated popper!
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thanks for the great suggestions, everyone! They will be well tested!
And yes, my containers are doing incredibly well, and I'm not exactly a green thumb. I usually hope half of what I plant will live (we travel a lot, so watering is hard) this year - they all did!
I really do need to get over my irrational fear of pickling and do some research - it looks like I'll have enough for every option possible. My grandmother had a massive garden and my childhood memories are her holing up in the kitchen for a week or two every summer, with jars all around, doing it. I think it intimidated me into thinking it's more involved than it most likely really is.
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Here's an easy reciepe that I use all the time. Brown bulk sausage and drain thoroughly. Either melt a soft chesse product or make a quick white sauce and add your favorite cheese to it. Mix the cheese (or cheese sauce) into the sausage. Slice the top of the banana pepper off and make a slit down one side, seed the pepper. Spoon the sausage and cheese mixture into the pepper. Cover the entire pepper with store-bought canned cresent rolls to seal them up ( Large peppers may take up to 3 cresents, but with this , the more the better). Bake according to the cresent roll can. These are simply delicious. I usually make 6-8 peppers and refrigerate the left overs. A friend of mine gave me the reciepe, but she uses hamburger instead. If you freeze your peppers whole, you can thaw them out and fix this any time of the year.
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I cut the tops off, and take the seeds out. Put in a ziplock bag, add salt, pepper and a little olive oil. Close the bag, and coat the peppers with the salt, pepper and oil, by shaking the bag. Remove peppers from ziplock. Grill on a medium-high grill (with the cover shut), for 2-3 minutes on each side. Tak off grill, add slices of good feta cheese, and gently place back on grill for a few minutes without turning, to melt the cheese. These have been a favorite of ours this summer, either as an app., or side.
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I'm italian and originally from PA and I'm telling you, you could make a mint there w/ your harvest of banana peppers. All the Italians have their own recipe for canned italian peppers. The peppers are cut into rings and doused w/ large amounts of an olive oil blend along with oregano and fresh garlic. Some folks add mushrooms and olives too. But they are served on italian bread w/ butter before meals, on salads, pizza, sandwiches, you name it. They are completely addicting and I've never found them anywhere else.
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