What’s Black & Red All Over? How to Roast a Red Bell Pepper

I looove roasted red bell peppers – so flavorful! My family loves to serve them as an appetizer, with olives, roasted garlic bulbs and fresh bread. Yum! They’re also one of my favorite things to add to sandwiches, for tons of flavor and nutrients and few calories! I was happy to find one at my Farmers Market yesterday, and roasted it up this morning to have on a delicious veggie sandwich. It’s super easy, super cheap (it was about 80 cents) and saves a jar! I’ve done it with yellow and orange bell peppers before for some variety as well. Here’s all you have to do:

Preheat oven to broil (You could also do this in the broiler, though I used the regular oven on broil)

Throw bell pepper in oven. You can put it directly on the rack, but I’d put a pan below it to catch the dripping juice! Just make sure to wash the pan right away when you take it out of the oven, otherwise it can get really sticky and hard to wash.

Roast the bell pepper until it blackens, rotating a few times so each side blackens evenly.

Remove pepper from oven – careful, it’s hot! Be gentle, because some of the hot pepper juice might squeeze at ya! Temperature-hot, not spicy-hot.

Place pepper in a brown paper bag. Lunchbags work great for this if you have them. I didn’t have any, but repurposed a bag that a bottle of wine came in! You can see the juices from the pepper seeping through in this pic! Let cool, then remove from bag.

By hand, remove blackened skins, pulp and seeds from pepper. Don’t be tempted to wash the seeds off – as my Mom discovered years ago, this removes a lot of the delicious flavor from the pepper! The seeds can get pesky, but you’ll get most of them eventually!

Slice and serve! When I make my sandwich in the morning, I bring the pepper in a little tupperware so my lunch doesn’t get soggy. I did this today for a delicious sandwich you will see featured on an awesome blog soon!

What’s your favorite way to spice up a sandwich?