How to Roast Garlic and a Red Pepper

Everyone needs to know how to roast garlic and a red pepper.
It's important for society to know this.
New recipes could be created.
Lives could be changed.
Knowing this could even make people fall in love!
It's a long shot, but it could happen.

Garlic that is roasted is good for so many dishes, spread on bread or even eaten by itself (as I did after it came out of the oven).
I had to taste test it!

I found this recipe over at Simply Recipes.
Roasted Garlic

one head of garlic
olive oil for drizzling

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
To roast a whole head of garlic, peel the outer skin off, leaving the skin on the individual cloves.
Cut 1/4 to 1/2-inch off the tops off of the cloves with a sharp knife so that you can see the individual cloves.

Place on a piece of tin foil and drizzle with olive oil.

Rub it in to the cloves with your fingers (cleaned, of course).

Wrap the garlic head up in the tin foil.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until cloves are tender when lightly squeezed.  Set aside to cool enough to be handled.

Remove individual cloves and slice through the skin with a knife to remove.
I found that it was also easy to remove the clove from the skin by squeezing each at the bottom, so that it kind of pops out of the skin.

I found these fantastic instructions over at Food Network.

Roasted Red Pepper


1 red pepper

Remove the sticker, clean and dry the pepper.
On a gas stove, turn a burner onto high and place the pepper on the grate.

Turn the pepper with tongs as it roasts, making sure that it is evenly charred on all sides.
The pepper can also be cooked the same way on a grill.
When using an electric stove, broil the pepper leaving the door slightly ajar so that the heat remains on high.
During cooking, you may hear some popping and hissing.  No need to fret, it's just the skin blistering and the water in the skin evaporating.  It's a pretty cool to watch the small bubbles form and then pop.

After the pepper has been completely charred, immediately place it into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a plate.  Doing this will allow the steam to help peel the skin, so don't be tempted to lift the plastic wrap off.
Um, yeah, I forgot to do that step, but really didn't have too much trouble peeling the skin.
Place a fine mesh sieve over a bowl.  You will use this to hold the seed while they drain.
After the pepper has cooled sufficiently to handle,  take it and with a very sharp knife, cut into the top of the pepper, moving the knife around the stem.  This will enable you to pull the stem and the seed pod out all at once.  Put the stem and seed pod into the sieve.
Hold the pepper upside down over the sieve to drain any water that may be in the pepper.
Slice down the length of the pepper and open it up so that it lays flat on the cutting board.

Remove any seeds from the skin, placing them in the sieve as well.
Turn the pepper over and scrape the charred skin off with the knife, wiping the knife off in the sieve as you go.

There may be bits of skin left and you may be tempted to rinse the pepper off, but don't.  Doing so will remove some of the charred flavor which you worked so hard for.

Slice the pepper into strips, placing them into the bowl with the juices under the sieve.  Cover with olive oil and some garlic slivers, and refrigerate.  They can be kept this way for one to two weeks.
For the recipe I used these two items for, I didn't place half of the strips of pepper in the olive oil because I used them right away.

Any ideas what I might have used them for?
I follow up with that recipe tomorrow!
Now go on out there and change some lives with this new knowledge of yours!!

I give you BIG baking hugs and muffins!!