roasted red peppers

 

Red peppers were 10 for $1 at Stanley's a couple weeks ago.  Of course I bought 10.  Now, when buying produce at Stanley's, you have to keep it mind it'll go bad in about 3 days.  So I took quick action with these bad boys, dicing 4 for the freezer (stirfries are surely in our future) and chopping the rest into strips for roasted red peppers.  

I didn't roast them the conventional way.  Traditional recipes call for scorching the whole pepper on an open flame and then peeling the skin off and scraping the seeds out.  Even though my husband keeps a fire extinguisher in the kitchen expressly for my cooking endeavors, I wasn't in the mood to have to use it.  So I delegated it to the grill pan instead.

Here's the how-to: After cleaning the peppers and cutting into strips (skin still on), place them in the grill pan to sizzle over medium-high heat.  Once they soften a bit, hold a potato masher on them for a few seconds to flatten them out more.  And then flip each one to grill the other side. 

Place in a jar and cover with olive oil, a teaspoon of salt, a couple teaspoons of oregano.  I also roasted two cloves of garlic in the grill pan, minced them, and threw those in as well.  Keep the jar in the fridge and add the peppers to sandwiches, pasta, pizza, burritos, green beans, soups, or enjoy on their own.  And note they taste even better since the fire extinguisher wasn't involved.

Green beans & roasted red peppers.