Shishito Pepper Recipe with Dipping Sauce

This Blistered Shishito Pepper recipe is a 10-minute summer treat that works as a snack or side dish. Serve it with a creamy dipping sauce inspired by the sweet, tangy, and savory flavors of Vietnamese cuisine.

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This Shishito Pepper Recipe Is An Irresistible Snack

One of our favorite things to grow in our garden is shishito peppers. They need very little care other than plenty of sun and watering, and these easy plants are prolific once they start getting going. By mid-July, we can usually harvest peppers from them every few days.

If you don’t garden, no worries – shishito peppers are pretty widely available these days, at places like Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and other well-stocked grocery stores. Check your local farmer’s market, too!

These mild peppers are one of our daughter’s favorite foods, so we eat them all summer long. Most of the time, we simply blister them in a pan and sprinkle them with salt, as we’ll detail below. We’ll often eat them just like that, but occasionally we’ll make a shishito peppers dipping sauce.

With flavors inspired by nuoc cham (a Vietnamese condiment), this creamy dipping sauce for shishito peppers is tangy, creamy, nutty, salty, sweet, spicy and savory all at once!

What Are Shishito Peppers?

Shishito peppers are long, about finger-length peppers that have a thin skin. They originated in Japan but have become popular on restaurant menus in the United States in the last decade.

Shishitos are usually harvested when green for a savory snack that blisters or roasts quickly. Most shishitos are mild, but it’s been said that about 1 in every 10 to 20 shishito peppers is spicy (although we’ve found the ratio to be only one spicy one in every few hundred, ourselves).

To eat, simply grab a pepper by the stem, pop the pepper portion into your mouth and bite it off, and then discard the stem.

Shishito Peppers Recipe Ingredients

A full recipe card, including exact ingredient amounts, appears at the bottom of this post.

• shishito peppers – look for bright green, firm peppers without any soft spots.
• oil – you’ll need a neutral oil with a high smoke point for blistering the peppers, such as vegetable oil or avocado oil. Avoid olive oil here, as its smoke point is too low.
• sea salt – for sprinkling over the peppers to make them extra savory.
• mayonnaise – a good quality mayonnaise like Hellman’s or Duke’s is best for the base of the shishito pepper dipping sauce.
• lime juice – skip the bottled stuff, please. You only need 2 teaspoons for shishito pepper sauce, so one fresh lime will do the trick. We’ve also tested this with lemon juice, and it makes a pretty good substitute.
• sesame oil – we love the nutty flavor that toasted sesame oil brings to this shishito peppers dipping sauce.
• fish sauce – don’t worry, the finished sauce won’t taste fishy. Fish sauce just adds an epic amount of umami to any recipe it’s used in. Red Boat is our preferred brand.
• honey – this will add a little sweetness to the sauce, and balances out the heat of the red pepper flakes.
• garlic – because what isn’t better with a little garlic, really?
• crushed red pepper flakes – we use just 1/4 teaspoon for a little kick of heat for this dipping sauce for shishito peppers, but feel free to use more if you’d like a spicier sauce.

How To Prepare Shishito Peppers

1. SAUCE. Whisk together the garlic, mayonnaise, fish sauce, lime juice, sesame oil, honey and red pepper flakes until smooth.

2. BLISTER PEPPERS. Crack a window—the kitchen might get smoky. Heat a bit of oil in a cast iron skillet, add the peppers, and cook them undisturbed for 3 minutes. Give them a stir, then cook for another 2 minutes without touching. When the peppers are blistered and browned, remove from the heat and sprinkle with salt. Serve with the aioli.

What Kind Of Skillet Should I Use To Blister Shishito Peppers?

If you have a cast iron skillet, this shishito pepper recipe is absolutely the time to break it out. The even, intense heat that cast iron provides blisters the peppers so, so well.

If you’re new to cast iron cooking, be sure to brush up on how to clean and care for cast iron cookware after you’re done blistering the shishitos.

But if you don’t have cast iron, no worries at all. A large, heavy stainless steel skillet will also work quite well for blistering shishito peppers.

How To Store Shishito Pepper Dipping Sauce

Store the shishito pepper dip in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. In fact, we think the flavor actually improves if it’s made in advance and refrigerated.

Blistered shishito peppers are best eaten immediately after they are cooked, so make those fresh!

Shishito Peppers Recipe FAQs