How To Roast Anaheim Chile Peppers

I love fall!! The smell of the fireplaces burning, the golds and reds of the leaves and the wonderful taste and smell of roasted Anaheim chile peppers! The smell drifts through the house calling us all to the kitchen to share a chile wrap together! It is a tradition that carries on through the generations. My parents, my sons and I love the wraps! My grandad began it with the chile grown in the garden out behind his house. He had fruits, vegetables, chickens and hogs on that quarter of an acre in the South Valley of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The best part of it all was the strawberry patch and the chile pepper rows!

Grandad is long gone now, but the love for the chile carries on! When my Mom said she was going to roast some chile, I told her I wanted to capture it for the generations ahead to have! She willingly agreed and allowed me to photograph and document the steps. Thanks, Mom (Marie Lawson) for sharing this with us!

This is how to prepare them indoors in the broiler of the oven. If it is good weather, you can prepare them on the gas grill outdoors. We are having a cool, blustery day, so they are being prepared indoors.

First, select some firm peppers with minimal blemishes and clean the dirt off by wiping with a damp cloth. Start the broiler. Allow it to heat while you complete remaining steps. Cover a shallow pan or cookie sheet with aluminum foil. This makes for quick and easy clean up! Place the peppers on the pan in a row with the stems all to one side. This makes for easy turning.

Place peppers under broiler. This step takes a only few minutes, so they must be watched closely. The reaction of each pepper may be different and you need to be watching to make sure not to over blister them. When completely roasted, the skin will be blackened. That is normal, do not panic! You will roast them listening to hear them sizzle, bubble, split and even pop! As the skins begin to bubble and pop, turn the pepper to give the entire pepper a full roast!

Have a plastic bag or ziplock bag handy. When the skins on the peppers have completely roasted, take the pepper and place into the bag. Seal the bag. When all the peppers are into the bag, seal completely and wait about 15 minutes. This allows the peppers to steam and the skin will peel off easily from the meat, or flesh, of the pepper. Wad up the foil off of the pan and throw in the trash!!! Easy clean up is great!

For this next step, you may want to use rubber gloves. The heat of the pepper is within the seeds, but handling chiles at all can cause your hands to burn. Be sure to keep your hands away from your eyes! If you get the oil from the chile in your eyes, it will BURN!!! Flush them with water!! It will go away and will not cause permanent damage, but OUCH!

When the 15 minutes have elapsed, remove the peppers from the bag and prepare to peel them. Work up the peppers one at a time. Begin by selecting a pepper. Roll the pepper with your fingertips to loosen the skin. Hold the pepper by the stem and gently peel off the skin. When all of the skin is peeled off, then gently twist off the stem top. Many of the seeds will come out at this time. Lay the pepper on a plate and gently scoop away the remaining seeds with your hand. Place the skin, stem and seeds into your plastic bag! The seeds have the heat, so leave behind the heat you would like! Less seeds will be less heat!

Once you have all the peppers peeled and the seeds removed, then you are ready to eat it!!

There is no bad way to eat the Anaheim chile pepper! We LOVE it on a cheeseburger! It is AMAZING on a grill cheese sandwich! Today we had it on a tortilla, a chile wrap! It is simple to make. Get an iron skillet out and let's begin!

Preheat the skillet, just to the point that it is almost too hot to touch. Place a large flour tortilla in the skillet. Heat for 30 seconds, flip it over for another 30 seconds. Place the warm tortilla on a plate, spread with a tablespoon of butter and place one chile pepper in the center. Sprinkle with garlic salt, then roll up and eat! They are amazingly delicious!

A tip is to serve any of these with tomato slices. Sometimes the chile peppers are significantly hot! The acid in the tomato seems to neutralize the heat and make it much more pleasant to eat! These are also really good served chopped and in a large bowl of pinto beans. This is a staple in my New Mexico heritage! Soul food that takes me back home. Back to that garden, picking peppers with my grandad. Enjoy!

Photo and Text Copyright 2011Deborah M. Carey