Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Salsa with Fire-Roasted Pepper

It's that time of the year - the pepper roasters are fired up and charring the skin on peppers. You'll find them at the farmer's market and at some farm stands in the area where you can buy bags of peppers ready to take home and clean.

The scent of fire-roasted peppers is so enticing to me. I used to hate cleaning them until I came up with a couple tricks to make the process less cough-inducing. I used to peel the skins off under running water, but that just made things worse. Now, I have a big bowl of water at hand to rinse the peppers as I clean the skins off and get rid of the seeds.

I also wear gloves. Even if you think the peppers won't burn your skin, the oils that remain on your hands can cause problems later if you rub your eyes. It's particularly annoying if you wear contact lenses.

Once the pepper are cleaned, you've got a lot of options for using them.

But before you find a use for all of them, grab just one pepper for this salsa. The heat level of your salsa is dependent on how hot your fire roasted pepper is.

Salsa with Fire-Roasted Pepper

1 fire-roasted pepper, peeled and cleaned
2 tomatoes
1 pickling cucumber
1/2 medium white onion
1 green bell pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
Several grinds black pepper
2 teaspoons lime juice

Chop the fire-roasted pepper finely and put it in a medium bowl. Dice the tomatoes and add them the bowl.

Peel the cucumber, dice it, and add it to the bowl. Core and seed the bell pepper, dice it, and add it to the bowl. Add the salt, pepper, and lime juice. Stir to combine, and serve.

This salsa can be made ahead of time and refrigerated until needed.

Salsa with fire-roasted peppers on Punk 
Domestics
Yum