Spoiling red bell peppers turned into a sauce, with tomatoes, celery, carrot, and onions
Save rotting bell peppers from the waste, by turning them into a smooth sauce to enhance pasta, burgers or replace the plain tomato base of your pizza. Skip this article if you're disgusted by mold!
Let me repeat the warning from the subtitle: skip this article if you’re digusted by the view of mold. I admit this is a weird recipe.
Serves: 2 pizzas, 8 paste plates, 16 burgers, … it’s a sauce, it depends how you use it
Preparation: 10 minutes
Cooking: 80 minutes (including twice 30 minutes of unattended cooking)
It’s a weird recipe. It advertises as a recipe using spoiling bell peppers, however it does not intend to instruct you to let them rot. You can (and should) cook this recipe with fresh, ripe red bell peppers. When I saw my three red bell peppers decaying, I thought they would still deserve being stars of a recipe.
As far as I remember, throwing food was not an habit — at home, at other’s, at the restaurant. We would finish our plate, or save leftovers for later in the fridge. As an adult, I carried on with this habit of seeing food in the waste as an insult to those who suffer from hunger. As a fault. When I have vegetables starting to rot, it’s my fault of either planning poorly my meals (buying too much at once, or diverging from my cooking agenda), conservating poorly the food (leaving them at room temperature, or not paying attention to the moisture in the veggie drawer of the fridge), and of course a combination of both.
Some people dislike the simple view of decaying food, because their shape, color, or mold beard suggest in our culture they’re not longer edible. I overcome this idea and go save what can be saved from the vegetable, fruit, bread or whatever. The present recipe is both about saving three red bell peppers, and about a delicious, smooth sauce to enjoy with your bugers, pasta dishes, or in place of the tomato sauce of your pizza. It may not be the fanciest recipe around, though I bet you’ll enjoy this thick, purée-like sauce.
Why does spoilage happen?
The decomposition of plant (or animal) is called spoilage in the context of food. This happens when the bacteria or fungi grow on the food, and start to break its substance down into simpler organic and inorganic components. This happens after a fruit or a vegetable has been harvested, because it’s no longer tied to the plant which was nourishing it — and defending it with nutrients. Bacteria and fungi themselves may not be harmful to humans, though the by-products of decomposition can be, even before the food appearance goes beyond the point of human appeal. As ugly as this sounds (and looks), it’s part of a natural cycle to re-use finite resources on our planet (which some humans still refuse to acknowledge). Note that other bacteria and fungi are, on the opposite side, a delight for humans: think about fermented products (bread, vinegar, fermented vegetables, …) and edible mushrooms (shiitake, enoki, …).
Ingredients
3 red bell peppers, from ripe to rotting stage — not further into the decomposition process, do not poison yourself!
800 g of canned peeled tomatoes with their juice (chopped tomatoes work as well)
1 big onion ~ 160 g
1 carrot ~ 140 g
1 celery branch ~ 100 g1
Oil (sunflower or olive oil will work best for this recipe)
1 heaped spoon of salt (I used gray, flavored salt)
Preparation
There’s not much to prepare ahead of cooking this recipe. However, investigating what can be saved from the red bell peppers can take some time. If you’re comfortable multi-tasking in your kitchen, you can pretty well start heating your pot at the same time you reach step 2.
Remove damaged or suspicious parts of the red bell peppers, along with the white parts inside; wash the good parts thoroughly, and chop into thumb-size pieces
Peel the onion, chop it into thumb-size pieces
Peel the carrot, chop it into thumb-size pieces
Wash the celery branch, slice it into moon quarters
Cooking
The cooking part of this recipe is straigh-forward, with two steps asking you to leave the ingredients cooking, or cooling, for 30 minutes. You can use a non-stick deep-sided pan or pot if you wish; note I didn’t and there was nothing sticking to the bottom of my pot.
Heat a deep-sided pan or a pot to medium flame/power
Cover the bottom of your heated cookware with oil
Add the carrot, onion and red bell pepper pieces into the pot; cover for 5 minutes
Add the tomatoes, stir; cover again
Lower the heat to low; let it cook for 30 minutes
Remove the lid, add the celery, and salt; if you want to add other spices (chili pepper, anybody?), do it at this step
Stir gently, then let it cool down for 30 minutes — do not cover again
Transfer into a robot mixer or a blender, then mix (or blend)
You can use this sauce as soon as you mixed it. As I wrote above, I like to use such purée-textured sauce in burgers, with pasta, or on pizzas. It can be refrigerated, and enjoyed cold as a spread on bread. I usually keep what I’ll use in the next days, and freeze 2-plate-pasta-sauce-sized portions. It unfreezes slowly, so you’ll have to plan ahead of time and let it return to room temperature the night before you need it. I usually move it from the freezer to the top tray of the fridge on Sunday evening, to cook pasta mid-week.
Enjoy!
If you’ve tried the recipe, and would like to comment — whether you loved it, or hated it — please do so. I’m welcoming ideas, even if these are non-vegan recipes I’ll have the challenge to “veganize”.
Here’s a tip before you go
Let me be concise: safety first! If food smells bad, and tastes bad: skip it. Period. Eating food improper for consumption will not save the planet; it will make you sick. Or worse.
Thank you for reading. If you liked this post, you can share it to your audience — it’s public, and free!
Be cautious: celery is a known allergen
I admit I was hoping for a Roquefort-like receipt, with the mold and all :p. This being said, looks delicious!!