Grilled Bell Pepper Salad with Burrata
Bell peppers are a fav of mine. I love them raw, sautéed, and roasted, but I think the ultimate preparation for them is grilled. You can pick up that extra sweetness and great tenderness on the stovetop or in the oven, but only the grill gives you a distinct char that makes them all the better. I use bell peppers throughout a lot of my recipes on this site, but it's a bit of head scratcher why I have never done an all bell pepper salad before. So I took the opportunity to do just that at a Meatwave this past spring and loved the results.
I was aiming for maximum sweetness in the final salad so I opted to forgo green peppers and stick to an equal mix of the sweeter red, yellow, and orange varieties. For optimal handling on the grill, I needed to get these peppers to be both large and flat, which I did by first stemming and deseeding them, then cutting the remaining flesh into only three or four large flat squares.
I would have loved the peppers just on their own, but since I was labelling this a salad, it felt like a dressing was in order. I first thought of using balsamic vinegar, but I wanted the touch of the dressing to be much lighter, so opted for the much more mildly flavored champagne vinegar instead. I whisked that together with extra-virgin olive oil, a bit of Dijon, garlic, and a pinch of red pepper flakes to create a flavor that I thought would compliment the sweetness of the peppers well.
In keeping with wanting to center the peppers here, I went minimal with the other toppers, choosing just enough things to make the dish feel whole. Those included toasted pine nuts for a bit of crunch, basil for freshness, and burrata for a creaminess that would dampen the intensity of the peppers and dressing a bit.
As I got the grill going, I placed all the pepper slices in a large bowl and tossed them with oil and salt.
Then I placed them all over direct heat with the inside of the pepper facing down to start. After they were all set on the grill, I began to peek to see how they were cooking and flipped each slice as I saw them start to soften and pick up some charring around the edges. On the exterior side, the charring happened much faster, so I remained vigilant and kept flipping to avoid them from getting overtly burnt.
As each slice was rendered crisp-tender with a decent amount of char, I transferred them to a cutting board. Once all done, I cut the large squares into four smaller ones before arranging them on a large serving platter. I then spooned on dressing to taste and sprinkled on the pine nuts and with torn pieces of burrata and basil.
The final salad was all I was hoping for. First and foremost, the peppers were centered with their fruity sweetness defining the flavor and the bits of char adding a distinct taste of the grill. The dressing did temper the sweetness a little and the bits of crushed red pepper were always a welcomed contrast. While my main intention for the pine nuts was crunch, it was their toasty flavor that I felt was the more crucial part of the equation, tasting right at home with the basil and burrata. Luckily my guests seemed to have a similar fondness for this dish, one even mentioning to me that they does not like bell peppers, but loved the salad, making this the type of dish that's capable of changing minds.
