Or the opposite. I’ve entered my chili into two work contests. The first was at my work and I won. The second was the wife’s work and it came in 2nd to a green chili. Several coworkers told her they preferred mine but felt obligated to vote for the green chili being Colorado and all. One of her coworkers even asked her for my recipe.
Masa sounds like a great way to thicken chili if you want it thicker. I’ve crumbled up tortilla chips in thin chili and let it dissolve into the chili and thicken it up. Works well.
Pueblo chiles but everyone here uses Hatch chiles.
I mentioned that I like to make green chili stew, which is not the same thing as chili verde. It’s always a huge hit with guests. Here’s the recipe, although I now use a jar of medium Hatch chilis instead of going through the hassle of roasting them. A friend made this with the hot version of Hatch chilis and it was nearly inedible.
Green Chili Stew
INGREDIENTS
12 hatch green chilies (if not available anaheim will work too)
•
2 lbs pork shoulder
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1⁄2 cup onion, finely chopped
2 minced garlic cloves
6 cups chicken broth
6 ounces beer (optional)
1⁄2 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
3 bay leaves
1⁄2 teaspoon cumin
1 (10 ounce) can diced tomatoes
3 large potatoes, diced 1/2-inch
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
DIRECTIONS
• Broil green chiles in the oven turning often to evenly darken skin making sure they don’t burn.
• Remove from oven and cover with a dish cloth for 10 minutes to steam the skins off.
• While the chiles are resting, cube the meat, sprinkle with salt & pepper and brown with onions & garlic in oil in a large pot for 5 minutes.
• Add broth, half a can of beer, spices. Bring to a simmer.
• Let simmer for 1 hour or until meat falls apart.
• Peel skin from chiles, chop and add to the pot (including the seeds).
• Let simmer for 30 minutes then add the tomatoes & potatoes (add a cup of hot water if needed).
• Simmer until potatoes are done.
• Melt butter in a small skillet & add flour, cook for 2 minutes stirring constantly – add to the pot.
Yeah, at some point there is an area where a dish can belong to both. I don’t consider thickness to necessarily be the primary indicator of a soup vs stew, but it is one (major) factor. But just dumping an asston of flour into a soup doesn’t automatically make it a stew, either. Our diners growing up had “cream of” soups that were so thick you could stand a spoon in them. But those were soups, not stews.
That does sound delicious. How does it differ from a chili verde or Colorado green chili though? The ingredients look very similiar.
Is it the addition of potatoes? Diced potatoes do seem to make a recipe more ‘stewey’ than ‘chiliesque’. Also, I see that your stew does not call for any chiles spicier than Hatch, so that’s another key difference I suppose.
Uh oh, I think we’re getting back into that murky territory of what defines ‘stew’ vs. ‘soup’ vs. ‘chili’…
I always thought if it contained collagen, either from bones, a bone broth or chuck roast, then it was a stew. Otherwise it is a soup. The idea of using thickener to make a soup into a stew was to simulate the effect of the collagen.
That’s a defensible definition, but soup is also gonna have a lot of collagen. All my soups gel (if I make them from scratch). And I use bones in my soups more than I do in my stews. So, I don’t know. It’s all quite fuzzy.
Yeah, the potatoes are the culprit, but also the absence of tomatillos. You can make it as hot or mild as you like. Chili verde is a specific dish made with tomatillos, though still a stew.
@pulykamell has it correct.
And so does @Saint_Cad when it comes to the most frequently used variant here in Colorado.
Chile peppers in Colorado are a bit weird. Here in Colorado Springs, we’re close enough to hatch to get genuine hatch chiles pretty quickly with minimum loss in quality, but we’re only an hour’s drive from most of the Pueblo growers, so while I personally feel Hatches are better, the Pueblos are fresher and it all balances out.
Seeing corner roasters (propane powered drum chile roasters) in a few locations during late summer used to be a thing, but the few I visited stopped with COVID and haven’t really returned.
Both varieties can run from mild (I’d call them flat out sweet, but tastes differ) to darn hot. So for most chili verde options, I’d recommend a mix.
As a Southern NM boy growing up, any chili verde would have hatch (various), tomatillo, pork (generally chuck), chicken stock, garlic, onion oregano (Mexican), cumin, cilantro and lime. LOT of variants, but those would be the ones I’d notice if they were missing. And lots add more.
When I’m making it, it’s normally one of two options.
Chunks of say 1.5 inches square pork in the above (and normally with a bit of beer as additional fluid), pressure cooked, for when I want to serve whole with the remaining fluids and ingredients pulsed or stick blended for a smoother or chunkier sauce depending on desires.
Or, slow cook all of the above overnight, then in the morning, shred all the pork into threads and simmer all day. This options uses more fluid, and I’ll absolutely need to add more of all the flavorings in the last two hours because the immediacy of said flavors would otherwise be lost. This option ends up being soupy - you pour it over other foods, or eat it with hot fresh tortillas as a soup/stew.
ETA - most of the southern NM options don’t include beans of any sort, but are very often served with refritos or other bean options on the side.
That was the family definition from their days in Iowa. Also a casserole was defined as having 1/2 cup of grease and I think that is a Midwest thing I think.
So I wonder if soup vs stew is a regional definition like as an example Midwest is about significant collagen while the Atlantic Seaboard it may be any sort of thickener and the Pacific Northwest a stew is soup with minimal liquid.
I’ll mail you some from Denver. They are on every street corner during the season.
I have never made chili - but being Indian I cook a lot of Indian food. The one thing I always do when using dried spices (powdered or whole) is to bloom it in hot oil. The flavors have a lot more depth to them. I would love to work with a chili cook to see if that makes a difference.
Oddly enough, even here in parts of Chicagoland. When the Hatch chiles arrive (usually around late August), there’s roasting events at a handful of supermarkets throughout the metro area. (One supermarket, Jewel, even has a website for it: catchthehatchatjewel.com). I think I last went in 2019, and the place I went to even had several varietals to choose from (Big Jim, Sandia, and Barker is what I remember, but I think they may just have been labeled mild, medium, hot, or extra-hot, and I asked what they were.)
One of the things I most look forward to visiting my in-laws in Phoenix every year (other than seeing them) is going to the local Hispanic supermarket, Food City, and getting a zip-lock bag of roasted green chiles for like $3/lb [used to be as cheap as $1.50/lb several years ago), making some green chile sauce, and using it for eggs, green chili, mixing with cheese for a nacho chip dip, etc. And those are available pretty much year-round. We tend to visit Nov/Dec.
(Bolding mine).
I did, and it does make a difference!
I apply several things I’ve learned from Indian cooking to other types of cuisine-- toasting whole spices in a pan, then grinding them, then blooming in hot oil; for the oil, I often clarify and brown butter to make a ghee. I also like to sneak spices that are thought of as ‘Indian’ but less standard in other things-- like coriander and other more typically Indian spices in spaghetti sauce.
Yeah, I try to visit my folks in Las Cruces at the beginning of fall. Still daylight for the whole drive if I start early (it’s 630 miles) the heat is mitigated, and I’ll bring a cooler. On the way back, fill cooler with end of season roasted peppers and use them with glee for 2-3 months, by which point they’ll be gone.
I’d get more, but my freezers are pretty full of stuff.
I made a test batch of red chicken chili today. It’s currently on a low warm, but it’s basically done. I think it came out fantastic. I broke a LOT of rules making it, but I think it could be a contender. Here’s what I did:
Ingredients:
- 2.5 ounces each: dried Ancho, California and Guajillo chilis, reconstituted and seeded
- 1 small can chipotles in adobo
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced fine
- 2 cloves garlic, diced fine
- 1 carton Dona Marie Ready to Serve Mole (~12 oz.)
- 1 heaping Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
- Salt to taste
- 2 Tbsp cumin
- 1 Tbsp cinnamon
- 1 store bought rotisserie chicken, meat only, cut into small pieces
After the chilis were soft, I put them in a blender with the chipotles, mole and a bit of the water I used to reconstitute them.
I sautéed the onions and garlic until soft and added the chili mixture. Cooked that on low heat for about 30 minutes. Added the salt, cumin, cocoa powder and cinnamon to taste.
Added the chopped chicken and let it come together on low heat.
Pretty shocked at how much I like it and how easy and quick it was. It has a very rich chili flavor.
I may add some posole for the contest just to give it a bit more chew since the chicken is very tender.
Oh, nice! That does look like a nice recipe. I didn’t even think about using a rotisserie chicken, but that seems like a great idea for this. Seems like you got a mole-chili blend of some sort on your hands! I would love to try that!
The mole was an impulse purchase when I was in the aisle with the canned chipotles. I added it sparingly but wound up using the whole carton. It seems to smooth out the intensity of the chilis in a good way.
That does sound like a really good recipe. Looking forward to hearing how you fare in your SB chili contest!