Articles · Using things up
What to do with half a bell pepper
A pepper almost never gets used up in one go. Here is what to do with the half that is left before the skin starts to wrinkle.
A bell pepper is bought whole and used by the half. A recipe calls for one chopped pepper, the dish needs less than that, and the remaining half goes back in the crisper wrapped in nothing in particular. By the time you remember it, the cut edge has dried out and the skin has started to pucker.
The fastest thing you can do
Slice it thin, not diced. Thin strips cook through in the time it takes a pan to get properly hot, and they do not need a partner ingredient to be worth eating: a hot pan, a little oil, the pepper, and a few minutes until the edges start to char is a side dish on its own. Salt it after it comes off the heat, not before, or it steams instead of browning. If you have half an onion going soft too, slice it the same way and let the two cook together in the same pan — they finish at roughly the same time and the onion's sugars balance the pepper's bitterness as it char. Pile the result onto rice, eggs, or a sandwich and dinner has a vegetable in it with almost no extra effort.
The better thing, if you have half an hour
Charring the skin and peeling it is the move that turns an ordinary pepper into something you would order in a restaurant. Set it directly over a flame or under a hot broiler, turning every couple of minutes, until the skin is blackened and blistered on all sides — not just browned, properly black, all the way around including the shoulders near the stem. Move it straight into a bowl and cover it tightly with a plate or wrap for ten minutes; the trapped steam loosens the skin so it rubs off under running water instead of having to be scraped. What is left underneath is soft, sweet, and nothing like the raw pepper you started with. It keeps in the fridge under a little olive oil for several days, so it is worth doing even when you only plan to eat half of it tonight.
What you can actually cook tonight
Fifteen recipes in FridgeToForks need nothing but a bell pepper and what most kitchens already have on the shelf — onion, oil, a dry rub, a handful of spices. Tell it what else is sitting in your fridge alongside that half pepper and it will tell you which of those fifteen you can put together tonight, no extra shopping trip required, and which ones are close if you are willing to pick up one more thing.
How long it actually keeps
A whole, uncut pepper holds for one to two weeks in the crisper drawer with no special care. Once it is cut, wrap the open half tightly in something that actually seals — a loose fold of plastic lets it dry out from the cut edge within a day or two — and use it within three to five days. Wrinkled skin is not spoiled, it is just lost moisture; a pepper in that state is still perfectly fine for the pan, just not crisp enough for eating raw in a salad. Soft, slimy patches or mould starting at the stem end are the actual signal to throw it out, not a dull-looking skin.