When I was 17, my next-door neighbor Alma taught me how to roast red peppers. She turned the burner way up on her big old white enamel gas stove and grabbed a pepper firmly with a pair of long-handled metal tongs. She systematically blistered the skin on a series of five peppers, stashing the finished ones in a brown paper bag to trap the heat and finish cooking the flesh. When the last pepper had gotten a chance to work in the heat of the bag, she tumbled everything out into a colander in the sink and ran water over the peppers to cool them down enough to handle. I was amazed how the blackened skin just slid off, leaving behind a tender, naked pepper.

I don't have a gas stove in my apartment, and even if I did I think I would be hesitant to roast my peppers like Alma did because I've got some seriously sensitive smoke detectors. These days I roast them at high heat on a foil-lined baking sheet (if you roast them on an uncovered sheet you run the risk of caramelizing the sugars permanently to the surface of your baking sheet), turning them a couple of times to get as much surface-area blackening as possible. I still use the techniques she taught me of letting them steam a bit in a paper bag and running cold water over them to get them cool enough to handle.

In the fall and winter I often puree with some roasted carrots and stock into soup. The last batch I made went into some sandwiches and on the top of a salad. They are fairly low effort, and if you get your red peppers on sale, are much less expensive than buying the jars of gourmet roasted peppers.