Chef Paul Berglund came to our Wednesday class with a bag of peppers from the farmers market, and he roasted them in a way I had never tried.
No oil. No slicing. No seasoning. Whole peppers, straight into a hot oven, nothing on them at all.
I have been roasting peppers in oil and slices for years. His way is better, and it takes less work.
The method
Put the peppers in whole and raw. Don't cut them, don't oil them, don't salt them. Set them directly on a Baking Steel or a sheet pan on the upper rack.
Broil for 5 minutes. You want the skins to blister and go black in patches. Black is correct here. That is the skin separating from the flesh.
Move them down and give them 5 more. Lower rack, broiler off, so the side that was facing away catches up. Turn them once if the blistering is uneven.
Get them into a bowl while they are still ripping hot, and cover it tight. Plastic wrap, a plate, a lid, anything that traps steam. The heat coming off the peppers does the rest of the work.
Wait 20 minutes. This is the part people skip. The trapped steam loosens the skin from the flesh, and after 20 minutes it slides off with your fingers. No peeler, no knife, no running them under water.
Peel, pull the seeds, slice into strips.
How long does it take
About 10 minutes of oven time and 20 minutes of steaming. Half an hour start to finish, and 20 minutes of that is you doing nothing.
If your broiler runs hot, check at 4 minutes. If it runs cool, give it 7. You are looking for blistered and blackened skin, not a timer.
Why whole and dry beats sliced and oiled
You can slice peppers and roast them in oil, and Paul does that too. It is a different result.
Oil conducts heat into the flesh, so the pepper cooks through while the skin softens. Dry and whole, the skin takes the hit and the flesh steams inside its own jacket. You get a cleaner, sweeter pepper and a skin that actually comes off.
Paul's cooking rule is simpler the better, and if you can put something on raw and skip a step, do it. Whole peppers are that.
Save the juice
When you peel them, the peppers give up a lot of liquid in the bowl.
On a pizza, pour it off. It will soak the crust and you will lose your bottom.
For pasta, keep it. Pull the seeds out and use it. It is concentrated roasted pepper and it costs you nothing.
Which peppers
Paul used Italian frying peppers from the market. Long, tapered, oval rather than bell-shaped. His words on the call: “These are Italian frying peppers. They're not like Jimmy Nardello. They might be Corno di Toro. The farmer that I bought them from had them just listed as Italian frying peppers.”
Bell peppers work. Poblanos work. Anything with enough skin to blister works. Thin-walled peppers like shishitos go too fast for this method.
Doing it on a Baking Steel
A steel holds and radiates heat the way an oven floor does, so the peppers blister from below as well as from the broiler above. It also means you are not heating a sheet pan that cools the second you open the door.
If you already have one in your oven, use it. If you don't, a sheet pan on the upper rack gets you most of the way there.
What to do with them
We built a pizza with them that afternoon. Roasted peppers, par-roasted tomatoes, sausage and aged balsamico, straight baked for seven and a half minutes on our 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix.
Read the full Market Pizza recipe →
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to oil peppers before roasting?
No. Paul roasts them whole and completely dry. Oil cooks the flesh faster and makes the skin harder to remove.
Why cover the peppers after roasting?
The trapped steam separates the skin from the flesh. Twenty minutes under cover and the skins slide off by hand.
Do I need to put them in a bag?
No. Any bowl with something over it works. The point is trapping steam, not the container.
Can I roast peppers on a grill?
Yes, same idea. Direct heat until the skins blister, then straight into a covered bowl.
How long do roasted peppers keep?
Covered in the fridge, about five days. In olive oil in a sealed jar, a little longer.
About the Author
Paul Berglund is the chef and owner of Myrth in Ada, Michigan, and one of two James Beard Award winners in the state. He spent four years in the Navy and seven at Oliveto in Oakland. Before Myrth opened, he was testing his dough at home on a Baking Steel.
Andris Lagsdin invented the Baking Steel in 2012, after reading in the Wall Street Journal that steel conducts heat better than stone and grabbing a plate off the floor of his family's steel shop. He launched it on Kickstarter that August, Kenji Lopez-Alt tested it for Serious Eats saying it beat his favorite pizza stone, and over 200,000 home cooks have one today.
Every Baking Steel is still made at Stoughton Steel Company in Hanover, Massachusetts, the shop his father started in the 1970s. Before Baking Steel, Andris cooked under Todd English and spent fifteen years in the family steel business. He is the co-author of Baking with Steel with Jessie Oleson Moore.
He teaches free online pizza classes every month and makes pizza almost every day.
In 2026 he launched the 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix, the same recipe he has been teaching for over a decade, now in a bag. Just add water.