Of all the ways to roast peppers, grilling is my favorite. As their skins blacken, sweet peppers soften and pick up a smoky, charred flavor that enhances their natural sweetness.
Roasting peppers on the grill takes less time than in the oven – and doesn’t heat up the house. They’re easier to monitor and rotate than when inches from an oven broiler. Rotating one whole pepper at a time over a gas burner quickly grows tedious if you’re roasting a batch.
On a charcoal or gas grill, I might roast a pepper or two alongside other vegetables for a quick dinner. Yet I often fill the entire grate with peppers to freeze for later use or turn into salsas or sauces like Grilled Sweet Pepper Sauce.
How long you grill a pepper depends on the variety and how you plan to use it. I leave peppers over the open flame for about three minutes per side and peel away just the blackest bits of skin before chopping them to use fresh or freeze. Those I want to turn into a sauce might spend 15 to 20 minutes on the grill, until they soften completely and their blackened skins peel off entirely.
Roasted sweet peppers sold in jars are typically red bell peppers, but you can roast or grill any variety. I often harvest my homegrown peppers before they turn red on the plant, so my freezer holds bags of grilled peppers ranging from dark and pale green to orange and occasionally red. I roast many varieties, including sweet hybrids like gypsy peppers, Italian bull horn peppers and spicier poblanos. I usually add wood chips or pellets for batches of Home-Smoked Chili Peppers but grill without smoking chilies I’ll use immediately.
It’s easier to clean raw peppers than roasted ones, so I usually remove the core, membranes and seeds before grilling. Peppers cut in half or into pieces along their lobes lie flatter on a grill grate and char more evenly.
Here’s how I grill sweet peppers:
While cleaning the peppers, preheat the grill to a high temperature so that the peppers start to sizzle as soon as they hit the oiled grate. Grill the pepper sections on both sides, covering the grill with a vented lid between turning times and checking them often. When they reach your desired softness, place them in a bowl and cover it with an airtight lid so that they steam until they’re just cool enough to handle. Then peel away as much blackened skin as possible, without ripping the pepper flesh.
Grill small peppers that would slip through the grate the same way but in a lightly oiled grill pan, shaking it occasionally, or on a grill mat, flipping the peppers as they blacken. The yield varies with the meatiness of the peppers and the grilling time, but 1 pound of whole raw sweet peppers usually reduces to a little more than 1 cup of chopped grilled ones.
Julie Laing is a Bigfork-based cookbook author and food blogger at TwiceAsTasty.com.