Home Oven Chili Roasting

Home roasting of green chili will fill your home with a wonderful aroma, that is intoxicating. I do not suggest this an activity to do with children, so I had my little guys pick out a movie, and they got "planted" in front of the TV, mainly because roasting is HOT HOT HOT, and even handling the chili will transfer the Capsaicin to them. So washing of hands before handling anything else is necessary! So to start the day my kiddos decided on Cars to be the movie of choice. Wash the chili, not completely necessary, but sometimes a rotten one can be found in the bunch, and there is still dirt and such on the chili, and just want to make it pure, after the washing place them evenly and flatly as possible on a pan, do not crowd them onto the pan. I used two sheet pans for roasting the peppers on.
Get another pan ready for "sweating" the peppers after roasting, this is an important step, deep enough to hold all the peppers you are roasting, and a cover, I'm using a lasagna pan and foil.
Broil the peppers, as close to the broiler as possible, and turn on the light, you will need to watch very closely, as they will blister up rather quickly, when one side is blackening after approximately 2 to 3 minutes, you will need to pull them out and turn them over to roast and blister the other side. I have the second pan to broil in the oven the whole time, allowing the peppers to bake a bit and soften up, you will not need to flip these, just let them stay in the oven.

When the first pan is then all blistered, blackened, and done, switch the pans around, and start the blackening process with the other pan, remembering to turn the peppers after they have blackened on one side, and allow them to get blackened and blistered on both sides, approximately 2 to 3 minutes per side.
This is how they will look when blackened and blistered properly. They are not burnt, they are perfection. You might get wisps of smoke coming from the oven, and some of the peppers will bloat and pop from the steam building up on the inside. If you hear popping, that is a GOOD sound!
After they are done, transfer the roasted peppers to your sweating pan, and cover, tightly isn't necessary, just enough to hold the heat and steam in. Let them steam or "sweat" for about 30 minutes.
all covered, now you can do some fun stuff with the kids till you are ready to peel the chili
When ready to peel the chili, I have found that using an ice bath is the best way. It cools off the peppers enough to handle, and keeps your hands a little cool and you unaware of the Capsaicin that is digging into your skin. If you are really sensitive, gloves can be used, and are recommended! I have to stop for a minute and say thanks to The Frontier Restaurant( http://www.frontierrestaurant.com/ ) without having worked there for almost three years, I would have never known the special step of peeling green chili. Unbeknowst to many people, most New Mexican's do not roast their own chili.... why? Well it is roasted in such an abundance, they can already purchase it roasted, peeled, and chopped. Sure we can get it that way here in Florida, but it's only in little cans. Canning does something BAD to green chili, it's NOT the same. I used to buy huge Bueno chili http://www.buenofoods.com/ frozen tubs of green chili. They did all the hard work. The Frontier Restaurant roasted their own chili, and in idle hours of the work day, employees would peel the roasted chili. There always was a chili peeling station in the back, my first day of work, I peeled chili for 8 hours!

peeled chili... oh yes, you do need to peel it, it can be peeled prior freezing, or after, but you cannot eat the peel, well you can, but it's tough, and tasteless. The seeds are really hot, and not really good to eat, a few will not do any harm, but I don't care to eat the seeds.
The peels and the seeds. it seems like a lot, and really out of 10 pounds of green chili, the amount of flesh you get to actually eat is probably close to 6 or 7 pounds.
I chopped the chili and placed into bags for freezing. Chili should be frozen. Even though it is quite potent it will go bad, mold and rot, after a few weeks in the fridge. But what kind of moron lets the chili sit in the fridge for that long?
I roasted about 10 pounds of chili, and got about 7 to 8 cups of chopped green chili, I got 5 bags total, each with about 1 to 2 cups of chili
This same process can be used for any chili pepper, red peppers, green peppers, jalapenos, anything. If you want your own roasted red peppers follow the same steps, and you will get the same results with red peppers. I highly suggest this if you find a bunch of red peppers for really cheap... but that's not likely to happen. LOL, but doing it yourself is cheaper than buying roasted red peppers.

I would also like to thank my parents for sending out such a surprisingly abundant amount of chili. What a wonderful gift from New Mexico. I say, you can take the gal out of the Southwest, but you can't take the Southwest out of the gal!