Peter Piper only picked them

I enjoy making salsas and pepper-rich dishes, but I don't always like the biting heat some peppers provide. In order to keep the robust flavor of the pepper while moderating the heat, I roast and skin the peppers; then, depending upon the recipe, I de-seed and/or de-vein the pepper before using it.

• Take whole peppers (Chipotle, Banana, Jalapeño, or what have you) and place them on a wire grill rack over a barbeque grill, gas flame, or electric barbeque. If you do not have any of those available, you can pan-blacken them in a nonstick or cast-iron skillet, or you can place them on a baking tray under the broiler in your oven.
• Turn the peppers frequently and watch the roasting process carefully: you want them hot through, with their skins crisping and blistering away from the flesh beneath, but you don't want to burn the actual flesh of the peppers.
• Now remove the peppers from the heat and place them in a sealed plastic bowl or inside a lined paper bag and let them cool for approximately twenty minutes.
• Wearing gloves (latex or latex-free), strip the skin from the flesh of the pepper. The gloves protect your hands from volatile oils, and they facilitate the removal of the pepper skins.

Simple, yes?

If you want to retain the heat in the pepper, remove only the stem. To moderate the heat, open the pepper and remove the seeds, leaving the veins. To remove almost all of the heat, and bring the pepper down to a subtle, smoky sweetness, remove both the seeds and the veins from the pepper.