Tomatillo & Roasted Pepper Salsa

On page 40 of Bobby Flay Cooks American, you will find the recipe for Tomatillo-Red Pepper Relish – but really it was more like a salsa. The ingredients include roasted red pepper, tomatillos, red onion, lime juice, olive oil, honey, chopped cilantro and fresh ground pepper.

Wisdom of the Grill. Roasting a pepper on the grill is quick, easy and really brings out the flavor. You begin but placing the pepper right in the fire. Not over the fire or near the fire – right in the fire.

It just takes a few minutes for the outside of the pepper to start to char. Use tongs and move the pepper around in the flame to get it roasted evenly all over.

When the char surrounds the entire pepper, bring it out of the flame and directly into a sealable plastic bag. The pepper’s heat and moisture will fog up the inside of the bag and it will begin to sweat. This is good, because the charred skin is separating from the roasted pepper underneath. 

After about 15 minutes and when the pepper is cool enough to handle, you can just slide the charred skin right off. It will just come off in your hand – no scrapping needed. If any char is left on the pepper you can just wash it off. 

Now you are ready to slice the pepper. Inside you will find the seeds, but just cut the top off and dump them all at once into the trash. Now just cut the pepper into slices and you are ready to go. I have seen jars of roasted peppers in the supermarket for up to $10. The pepper itself costs less that one dollar and roasting it yourself doesn’t cost anymore than your time – but not much time. The whole process took no more than 30 minutes. You could easily do this while other things were grilling and overlap the time. Roast your own peppers from now on, save the extra money and they will taste so much better from your grill than from a jar!  

After the peppers were roasted, I sliced up the rest of the ingredients: Red Onion, Cilantro and Tomatillos. The tomatillo is actually not a tomato even though sometimes it is referred to as a green tomato (tomate verde) in Spanish and Mexican recipes. I learned that it is actually in the gooseberry family! Who knew? 

You can see the finished product back in that first photo, together with some blue corn chips. The tomatillos were actually a little sour tasting, but the lime juice and honey provided the balance for this terrific red pepper roasted game-watching treat - not your typical chips and salsa!

Paul