Recipes / Blistered Shishito Peppers
Blistered Shishito Peppers with Flaky Salt and Lemon
This is the dish that made shishito peppers a standard American bar snack, and it is about as simple as cooking gets: high heat, a little oil, salt, acid. Under ten minutes start to finish, and almost no food cost.
Ingredients
- 1 lb shishito peppers, whole with stems on
- 1 tbsp neutral oil with a high smoke point
- Flaky sea salt, to taste
- 1 lemon, cut into wedges
Instructions
- Rinse the peppers and dry them completely. Water on the skins will steam instead of blister — this is the step people skip and the reason the dish fails.
- Heat a cast iron or carbon steel pan over high heat until it is genuinely hot, about three minutes.
- Add the oil, then the peppers in a single layer. Do not crowd the pan; work in batches if you need to.
- Leave them alone for about two minutes, until the undersides blister and char in spots. Toss, then cook another two to three minutes until blistered all over and slightly collapsed.
- Off the heat, scatter generously with flaky salt and squeeze lemon over the top. Serve immediately, eaten whole by the stem.
Notes
Prep 3 minutes · Cook 5 minutes · Serves 4
Roughly one in ten shishitos carries real heat and there is no way to tell which. Mention it when you serve them — people enjoy the roulette when they are warned and complain when they are not.
Variations that work: bonito flakes and a splash of soy; garlic and chili oil; a lime-and-fish-sauce dip. What does not work is low heat — without a hot pan the peppers steam and go limp.
Buying in volume? See our full chilies and peppers range.
