Grilled Padron Peppers

 

Padron peppers are small green peppers, often served as a tapas dish at Spanish restaurants. You can find their cousins, shishito peppers, on Japanese sushi menus. In the Americas, it's easy to find small multi-colored peppers, yellow, orange and red, that are the same size. It doesn't matter what kind of pepper you use in this recipe - the result will be similar, always a tasty and healthy bite for a snack or appetizer, with the difference being the amount of spicy heat. Padron peppers are not generally hot, but it's a game of pepper roulette, because about 1 out of 10 peppers is very hot and spicy. Shishito peppers taste and look almost identical to the non-spicy padrons, with only a rare appearance of spice. The red, orange, and yellow peppers are the most mild tasting of all the peppers, with never any heat.

Ingredients:

12 small peppers, padron, shishito, or small red, orange, and yellow
1 tsp olive oil
1 pinch fleur de sel or other excellent salt

 

Directions: Spray a large grill pan with olive oil and place the pan on the stove top over medium high heat. Wash and dry the peppers, then toss with the olive oil. Cook the peppers on the grill pan until the skins begin to blister, about 3 minutes per side. Remove the peppers from the pan, and drain on paper towels to remove most of the remaining olive oil. Sprinkle the salt over the peppers and serve.

Serves 4

Stealthy Cooking Tip: Use the peppers as part of an appetizer tray. I grouped them with an olive assortment and pepperdaw (sweet pickled) peppers. Other choices might be a small amount of cheese, carrots, or small grape tomatoes.