For The Best Charred Roasted Peppers, Skip The Pan And Do This Instead

Even devoted home cooks can become a bit miffed when a recipe calls for extra cooking. Nuts are a repeat offender; one must often toast them for optimal performance. Egg whites, too, are always demanding to be beaten into stiff peaks before you can fold them into this or that. Peppers frequently need to be roasted before you can blend them into muhammara, stuff them with savory additions, or even just serve them as one part of a larger mezze. And you really want to roast them over an open flame, rather than through the heated barrier of stainless steel, cast iron, or any other metal.

The best way to get a pepper's exterior to beautifully blacken and blister is over live fire. Allowing the flames to actually kiss the pepper's flesh is simply more effective than anything a pan can do, even cranked up to 10. The pan will obviously just never get as hot as direct fire. It'll also take longer to roast a pepper in a pan because you'll need to turn it much more frequently to get the whole thing roasted. Flames are just a better way to get the job done.

A nice outdoor grill is always tops for firing anything, whether it's proper charcoal burgers or fruit salad-inspired kabobs. You can put those babies right on the grates and cook them until their skins are charred and wrinkled, which will likely only take a few minutes on each side. But you might not partake of that idyllic, backyard grilling life. Some folks are so bold as to roast their peppers right on the gas stovetop. The peppers balance right on the burners, and get flipped once until they're blackened all around. You might only need to turn the dial to medium in this case, depending on how high your flames can leap.

Your oven's broiler kind of splits the difference between these other two methods, provided it's a model that uses actual flames designed to reach your items. This is also ideal for smaller peppers, which you'd otherwise have to worry about falling through the cracks on the grill or stovetop burner. You'll simply arrange whatever peppers you wish on a baking sheet, adjust a rack so that it's about four inches from the fire, and flip after around five minutes for an even roast. Then you can get back to the big-picture work of finishing whatever these persnickety botanicals needed to be roasted in the first place.