I'm not a chef, but I DID stay in a Holiday Inn last night...

July 23, 2009 10:33 AM

I recently made homemade chili rellenos. They were delicious. Yay me! However, the process of making them was tedious...

Just about every recipe out there calls for charring the peppers on the grill or under a broiler. So I grilled them up nice and black and then put them in a paper bag to steam for about 15-20 minutes. Next step was to peel the charred skin off. It. Took. Forever. Almost 10 minutes per poblano to gingerly pick off the skin in tiny bits all the while trying not to tear through the super soft chili underneath. I now have a good idea of what it feels like to be a doctor in a burn-unit.

Did I do something wrong? Is there an easier way to get the skin off?

posted by matty to food & drink (11 comments total)

I haven't made rellenos, but have made quite a bit of roasted pepper salsa and this trick has worked pretty well for me: rub a little bit of oil on each pepper before you roast or broil it. The oil spreads the heat around on the skins, causing them to blister up quite a bit more evenly. (I think this was a Rick Bayless technique from one of his books, but can't recall off the top of my head.)
posted by cog_nate at 10:46 AM on July 23

When I last made chiles rellenos it took maybe 10 minutes total to peel 3 chiles. You always end up with some tiny bits that need peeling, but not the entire thing. There's no completely avoiding the tedium.

Generally if the skin won't come off at all it's because they weren't cooked long enough or didn't steam long enough. Maybe they didn't steam properly in the bag? I've put them in a glass bowl with plastic wrap over it before and it's worked ok.
posted by cabingirl at 10:47 AM on July 23 [1 favorite]

Seconding the glass/plastic bowl with plastic wrap. It works like a charm. You also need to make sure that the chilis get super charred all over. You can also run them under a little bit of water to get the specks and such.
posted by Kimberly at 10:49 AM on July 23

I use a blowtorch to char the skin, setting them out an outdoor grill so I don't burn the house down. Thoroughly torching all the sides until the skin blisters and turns completely black usually does the trick and takes only about 2-3 minutes per pepper. Then steam them in a paper bag.

The trick to getting the skins off at that point is the use a few paper towels. Just rub the peppers gently with a clean paper towel (or regular towel, but that's a mess to clean), and the burnt skin will come right off. It should only take a couple of minutes per pepper to do that, too.
posted by booknerd at 10:59 AM on July 23

Nthing use a towel of some sort, your skin is too smooth to catch on the skin of the peppers when they're oily.

Also:

I now have a good idea of what it feels like to be a doctor in a burn-unit.

I'm going to really work to forget this, or I'm never going to be able to peel a roasted pepper or tomato again.

Yikes.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 11:07 AM on July 23

It sounds like you may have burned them, the skin becomes harder to remove if it becomes too charred. The chiles I get roasted from my local veggie mart have char on maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the skin and are super easy to peel. It's really the steaming that makes the skin come off.
posted by TungstenChef at 11:19 AM on July 23

Is there an easier way to get the skin off?

There are three easier ways.

1. After the pepper has steamed in the bag, leave the pepper in the bag and rub the bag ferociously. The bag will do a lot of the work for you.

2. Lay the pepper on a flat surface and hold it by the stem. (If the stem isn't long enough, you can hold it with a fork.) Scrape off the skin with a butter knife. You must apply the right amount of pressure so as not to scrape away the flesh.

3. Place the pepper in a clean towel and rub the skin off with the towel.

I almost always use method #2, which has the advantage of keeping my fingers off the peppers (and thus keeping the capsaicin out of my eyes.) It takes no more than 10 seconds per pepper. (And I never use #3 because I have cats, and there's no such thing as a cat-hair-free dish towel in my house.)
posted by mudpuppie at 11:30 AM on July 23 [1 favorite]

To give you a visual guide, this person has roasted their chiles the right amount. Notice how the skin is coming off in strips, almost in one piece. This person, on the other hand, has roasted her chiles too much. Notice how the skin has turned brittle and she's having to use running water to help get it off. The poor chile looks butchered from all the painstaking scraping she had to do.
posted by TungstenChef at 11:33 AM on July 23 [1 favorite]

I grew poblanos a couple years back, and would roast 'em over an open flame on the range, turning them with tongs as the blistered. Then a quick run at them, scraping with a paring knife—I didn't even bother to steam them. If you can move quickly and have decent knife skills, almost all of the charred skin just pulled off in one chunk. (Maybe this was because the peppers were fresh from the plant, but I never had any trouble at all getting the skin off without taking the flesh beneath. I do think most folks overcook the chilis though, since I think they should still be pretty crunch, especially if you're going to cook them again by breading and frying or stuffing and baking or stewing…)
posted by klangklangston at 12:53 PM on July 23 [1 favorite]

My two cents --- it's even char that helps me most. I usually do peppers halved under a broiler now --- over the burner I find you get it a little too uneven. If some areas char through to nea-ash while other bits (esp. the creases) stay almost untouched, then then uncharred bits will cling like death to the pepper and the charred bits will flake to powder, and you have to pick away at the borderland to get them to come up. A slower roasting that gives a more even char makes it a lot easier, and you get better roasted flavor.
posted by Diablevert at 2:20 PM on July 23

The link I posted with an example of charring the chile too much has been taken down, which is a shame because it had a really delicious looking recipe for poblano strips with cream that I wanted to try. Here's another example of too much char that's going to make it difficult for the person to peel their chile.
posted by TungstenChef at 5:09 PM on July 23