Roasting Peppers for the Freezer

Roasting peppers & flash freezing them is the easiest method I’ve found for preserving peppers. You can preserve all kinds of peppers this way!

I have a humongous backyard vegetable garden. Humongous! I’m talking about 2800 square feet. It’s bigger than my house! When my husband passed away and I was suddenly left a widow at 34 years old with 3 children to raise on my own, I decided to take my vegetable gardening to a whole new level.

In that garden, I grow all of the things. ALL of the things – I even have an herb garden and I make my own tea blends and spice blends from them. Half of my garden, however, is dedicated to nothing but peppers. Hot peppers, sweet peppers, insanely hot peppers… just call me the pepper queen.

You’d think that the middle of the summer would be my most busy time for putting up my garden harvest with all the tomatoes, squash and what not. Now, don’t get me wrong… I am plenty busy that time of year putting away all that stuff too but all of that work is nothing compared to the amount that comes with the pepper harvest.

The middle of August is when the rest of my garden starts to die off – anything that isn’t pepper related, that is. It coincides with the exact time that my pepper plants start to produce. September is by far the peak of my pepper harvest season (I live in Northeast Georgia). Each time I pick, many many MANY 5 gallon buckets filled. It takes hours to pick them all!

Then begins the real work. I stuff a ton of them for the freezer and make jalapeno poppers, cheesy sausage banana peppers, Chile Rellenos, etc. I dehydrate a ton too. Some get put up dried whole and some get turned into spice blends. I also do a ton of canning peppers.

The way I preserve most of my peppers for the winter though is by roasting them and then flash freezing them. This seals in that fresh picked flavor and requires the least amount of work of any of the persevering methods that I use.

Roasting peppers is EASY!

How do you roast peppers?

Sometimes I use my broiler in my oven but since I purchased my Ooni wood fired pizza oven – I find myself fire roasting them most of the time because I am loving that fire roasted flavor that it puts on my peppers. Now, this is not in any way any sort of sponsored post for buying a pizza oven – I’m simply just sharing my method. Before I got my pizza oven, I used the broiler of my oven for going on 20 years and it works beautifully!!

When I use my oven, I set the oven on broil. I lay the whole peppers on a wire rack on top of a baking sheet and I set that baking sheet about 6 inches from the heat. I let them broil for a couple minutes on each side, until the skin is blackened all around.

When I use my pizza oven, I place them in the pizza oven on a baking sheet small enough to fit on it and let them blacken on all sides too – just like I would in the oven.

Ok, my peppers are roasted. How do I preserve them for later?

After I broil or fire roast them, I lay them on a parchment paper or wax paper lined baking sheet and pop them into my freezer. Once they are frozen solid, I just put them inside of a ziplock bag. Since I take the time to flash freeze them first, I don’t have to worry about my peppers sticking together and I can just grab out as many as I need very easily. When ready to use, just run the pepper underneath cool water and the skin will slide right off. Then use as you’d normally use.

What kind of peppers can you roast and flash freeze?

Any kind of peppers!

I roast and flash freeze:

• jalapenos
• Poblano peppers
• bell peppers
• banana peppers (both hot and sweet)
• cubanelle peppers
• All. The. Peppers.

How long will the peppers keep in the freezer?

They last about a year in the freezer.