I felt a little like Santa Claus coming home from the farmer's market with a big sack of red and green slung over my shoulder. Except the presents were for me: I found a 1/2 bushel of pesticide-free peppers for $15- crazy cheap!
After dumping all these peppers into the sink for washing, though, it was clear that it wasn't as good of a deal as I thought. About 6-8 peppers were totally rotten and many had big bad spots. I was momentarily upset with my farmers' market vendor.
But luckily these peppers were fated for roasting, so I just cut out the bad parts, ditched the slimy ones in the compost and left my crabbiness behind.
In the past I've roasted peppers under the broiler or just held them over the flame on my stove. But this was a LOT of peppers! So I fired up the grill and let it work its magic while I relaxed indoors.
Look at how gorgeous these are! The smell was fabulous and I didn't have to heat up the house (well, at least until I starting canning them...)
I followed Linda Ziedrich's pickled roasted peppers recipe from The Joy of Pickling to preserve these- A nice simple recipe with just some garlic, a little salt, a little sugar and lots of vinegar. I admit to eating nearly a pint's worth plain.
5 comments:
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH! I'm so jealous! I usually roast mine in the broiler and then freeze them, but I bet your grilled and canned version is a hundred times better!
I'd eat a whole jar, too!
What a great idea to grill the peppers rather than broiling them! Anything to avoid heating up the kitchen these days.
About how long did you grill them for, and at what temp level - medium? high?
oh! i would LOVE to can some of those! can you do those in a boiling water canner? or must i have the pressure canner. didn't know, since they were pickled. also, i feel your pain on the deceptively cheap price of large quantities of produce. when i bought that giant box of canning peaches for $10, the ones underneath the nice top layer were mostly moldy or slimy. at least they were for butter and not preserves.
Amy P.- I grilled them over pretty hot coals for about 20-30 minutes for the first batch. This includes time to rotate them around so that the entire grill surface's worth of peppers was charred. I should have spread out the coals better!
allularpunk:Yep- this one's in a boiling water bath canner because I used a pickled pepper recipe. If you wanted plain peppers, they'd have to be pressure canned. Now we know to inspect beyond the beautiful top layer of produce at the market, right?!?!
i made these this year, and just opened a jar. they are soooo amazing. delicious. wonderful. fantastic. insert any superlative you like here. next year i am so growing all peppers!
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