That darn skin – Peppers, Tomatoes, etc :(

[Paul Bacino]

As my garden winds down,  I'm picking some delish, Marconi peppers ( Giant reds )

 

I love to stuff them with a meat mixture and bake them,  but it just seems like the skins are in the way and just a bit tough.  Early season peppers are thin skin and work well. 

 

Just been watching people post of pasta dishes with cherry tomatoes with skins on.. not a fan ( my choice, but occasionally I do them ).

 

Salsa with skin in them are non appealing to me also.

 

Larger tomatoes I usually peel, but I just can see peeling cherry tomatoes.

 

What's your take and solutions?

 

Cheers  Paul

[Martin Fisher]

I sometimes slice all but the tiniest ones.

Plate top and bottom, press down, slice in between.

[Shelby]

One year when our large tomato varieties didn't do squat, I peeled and canned cherry tomatoes  Yeah I was young and dumb lol.  I blanched them for a few seconds then dumped them in cold water.  They came right of of their skins.

 

I do the blanch method on the big tomatoes, too, when I'm peeling a large amount for canning or something.

 

For thick skinned peppers have you tried roasting and peeling them?

[Paul Bacino]

Shel..

 

Oh yeah.. roast peppers all the time.. might have to resorting to that..

 

then stuffing them

[pbear]

One cool trick (so to speak) is to use a torch to roast peppers and other chiles.  Blackens the skins almost instantly, with very little cooking of the chiles themselves.

[patrickamory]

One cool trick (so to speak) is to use a torch to roast peppers and other chiles.  Blackens the skins almost instantly, with very little cooking of the chiles themselves.

 

Wow I never thought about this. I usually do the rotating over a gas flame on the cooktop (no grill here alas). Takes forever. What brand of torch do you use?

[pbear]

All the serious torches will work, i.e., Iwatani butane, propane or propylene (Map Pro).  (Have one of each as part of my search for the elusive perfect SV/LT finishing tool, which hopefully the Searzall will turn out to be.)  The Iwatani takes longest and cooks the chiles a little bit.  Propylene is ridiculously fast and cooks more-or-less none.  Propane, of course, is in between.

[Paul Bacino]

Wonder if you can use an IR gun.. and get some flame temps.  Off these gases?

Pbear

 

Just curious

 

Paul

[Okanagancook]

I use the Map Pro. Also good for tomatoes when you just need a few peeled.

[pbear]

Wonder if you can use an IR gun.. and get some flame temps.  Off these gases?

Pbear

 

Just curious

 

Paul

 

If by this you mean a heat gun, it can be done but I don't think it's worth the effort.  We're talking over ten minutes to do a single pepper.  At that point, I'd rather just use a convection toaster oven.

[rlibkind]

Endosing two methods mentioned upthread:

 

For peppers, I've stopped using the gas burner and instead put them in an aluminum foil pan under my electric oven's broiler, set on high. After five minutes or so I turn them, keep a reasonably close eye on them and turn one or two times more, as required. Takes no more than 10 minutes. Then into a paper bag for 15 minutes until cool enough to handle and charred peel (at least most of it, having a little stick doesn't bother me) comes off easily enough. Made a tasty casserole last week using Poblanos this way, with fresh corn kernels, Mexican chorizo and Chihuahua cheese; quite tasty. A lazy man's version of chile rellenos.

 

For tomatoes, the blanching-ice bath method is easy and always works. I also use it for peaches.

[Franci]

I peel so many peppers, daily. While I love roasted peppers and I do at such a high flame on my top broiler that the pepper don't really cook much but my children love raw peppers without the peel. A good tomato peeler works well. And if you have a dehydrator the red pepper skins make a lovely pepper powder.

 

I don't mind the skin of cherry tomatoes, if it's thin, but I'm bothered by thick skin.

[Ttogull]

In the spirit of the original post, one of my methods of removing skins is to place peppers, tomatoes, onions, etc. directly on the charcoal of a grill. Natural only, not briquettes. It is fast and minimally cooks the food. The absolute best, IMO, is to do this on the charcoal of a wood fire (in my fireplace) because it imparts smoke flavors. I originally learned this from a Steve Raichlen show, but have since learned that it is ubiquitous in various cultures.

After, one can peel the skin if desired. But, for example in the case of salsa, using some of the charred skin makes an excellent salsa.

That said, I have become a proponent of minimally altering vegetables by cooking and removing skins. It's outside the bounds of this post, but I have dramatically altered my health for the better by consuming huge amounts of fiber. It feeds the microbiota of our guts. The skins of various vegetables (such as tomatoes) have lots of nutrients and fiber that are lost by discarding or cooking them. Or perhaps cooking them too much. The nutrients are destroyed, and the fiber is converted to sugars.

In the case of the Marconi peppers, which I have used, I might make stuffed peppers by cutting them in half while raw, stuffing with refried beans, cheese, and whatnot, baking until hot, and then covering with raw onions. Lots of textural contrasts with the crunch of peppers and onions with the softness of beans and the chewiness of cheese. Overlaying this with a raw tomato-raw garlic salsa would be sublime. Lots of stuff for our gut friends to eat. And once you get adapted, the standard method seems over cooked and mushy. And too sweet.

There are lots of skins I can think of that fall into this category. Carrot skins, potato skins, peanut skins, onion skins. I eat the stems and skins of broccoli, asparagus, leeks, cauliflower leaves, etc.

Edited September 27, 2014 by Ttogull (log)

[Paul Bacino]

Agree  to your Thoughts Ttogull

 

Only turn off on thick skin peppers is--- its like eating Scotch Tape  

 

Thanks for the chime in..