Many cookbooks warn you about handling hot chilies-they can give your skin a nasty burn. Some cooks handle chilies without the slightest difficulty, others with sensitive skins need to take precautions. For most cooks with not cuts or abrasions on their hands, cutting open and cleaning the membrane from chilies quickly should be no problem.
Professional chefs rarely use any protection, but they are careful to work quickly and to wash their hands, knife and cutting board with soapy water as soon as they are through. Soap and water are all that take to remove the capsaicinoid oils. Touching your eyes, nose or some other sensitive parts of your body (or someone else’s, heaven help you) before thoroughly washing your hands is a sure route to agony.
Thin rubber gloves work well if you have sensitive skin, but it is difficult to handle small chilies with rubber gloves. Some chili authorities suggest oiling your hands for protection. They don’t say how to keep a sure grip on your knife with that slick stuff all over your hands. Another author uses chlorine bleach in water for rinsing his hands while working with chilies (1 part bleach to 5 parts water). Ammonia in water is just as effective, but it has a more overpowering smell than chlorine. Both are rather hard on your skin.
Fumes that escape into your kitchen while you are working on chilies or cooking with them can irritate your eyes, nose and throat to an extreme. Always work with good ventilation. And remember, set everything up, so you spend as little touching the chilies as possible and breathing in their fumes.
Roasting and peeling
Roasting and peeling chilies is a chore, and it is debatable whether the amount of additional flavor justifies the effort. Chiliheads and serious chili-eaters roast routinely and they swear by the process. There’s no doubt, roasting brings out full chili flavors, it adds earthy and smoky tones and tames the raw vegetable flavors. Peeling removes the membrane that toughens on roasting. With experience roasting and peeling are relatively easy.
You don’t need to peel young chilies, but as they mature the skin tends to toughen, and peeling is unavoidable. Test an unknown chili by popping a small piece in your mouth before going to the trouble of peeling it. Peeled chilies have a more subtle and tender flavor, bright color and soft texture.
Roasting before peeling enhances and adds to the flavor. You could make a full-time hobby of collecting the many methods of roasting and peeling chilies. There are so many different varieties, that what works for one may not work for another. No matter what method you use, the first step is to cut a small slit in the chili to keep it from exploding during the process. The skin on chilies and peppers is airtight to keep out moisture, pests and microorganisms.
You start to heat that up, the moisture inside turns into steam and it explodes like an overinflated balloon. You can roast chilies on a barbecue grill, over the flame of a gas stove or under an electric broiler or in a very hot oven. Turn them often so they roast uniformly and acquire a dark, blistered but not burned skin.
Oven roasting a 550°F (290°C) is quick and efficient and you don’t need to bother turning them. It takes 3 to 7 minutes and the chilies are ready. I even know someone who uses a small propane torch to roast his chilies-unorthodox but effective, though with this method the fine roasted flavor doesn’t have the chance to develop. Torching is much too fast.
Commercial kitchens often have a large pot of hot oil sitting on the stove. Cooks drop the chilies right into the hot oil until they blister the skin (just a few seconds), then they dump them in cold water. The skin just slips right off. Stir-frying them whole in a little oil in a hot wok is another good way to blister the skins.
Some cooks also roast bell peppers. The process creates an entirely different-flavored vegetable-it is neither like raw, nor like cooked pepper. Bell peppers are easier to roast than chilies because they are larger. You cut them open, clean out the insides and lay large pieces flat on a baking sheet, then you broil them close to the heat without turning.
After you well-charred the skin to nearly black, you steam them in a tightly-closed plastic or heavy paper bag for 15 minutes to soften the skin, and it peels off easily. No matter what method you use, the steaming in a bag helps to remove the skin with ease.
As with fresh chilies, roasting also enhances the flavor of dried chilies. The method recommended by Mexican cookbooks is to dry-roast in a hot, heavy pan after you’ve removed the stem and seeds. You need to turn the chilies constantly-not a pleasant task because of the smoke and pungent fumes. Your other choice is oven roasting in at 350°F (180°C) oven for about five minutes. You don’t need to turn them, but be careful not to scorch or they turn bitter.
After roasting, cover the chilies with near-boiling water, put a weight (a plate, for example) on top so they remain submerged and let them soak from 20 to 40 minutes, until they feel soft. The thicker the skin, the longer they need to soak. When they feel soft, the skin slips off readily. An alternative method of skinning is to cut each open, lay it flat on a cutting board skin side down and with a small knife scrape the soft inside portion out.
They are ready to mix it with other recipe ingredients. Save the water you soaked the chilies in for liquid called for in a recipe for added mild chili flavor. You don’t lose the nutrients that way either.