Agreed. My brother prefers the ones grown around Chimayo (he lives in nearby Espanola) and they are pretty hot! They can also vary year to year depending on growing conditions, such as rainfall etc. Myself, I like them hot but I’m not a “the hotter the better” kind of guy. It’s the green chile flavor I love, hot or mild.
We get them fresh at our local supermarket and I like to roast them in the oven, meanwhile I brown some pork loin and deglaze the plan with either beer or if we have it on hand, a generous shot of whiskey. Skin & chop up the peppers. If I’m ambitious I’ll roast some tomatillos with the peppers and add cumin & coriander but if I’m lazy, I’ll just add a jar of salsa verde and call it good. I also add jalapenos and red chile flakes. I don’t really use measurements so it comes out a little different every time - usually with varying levels of heat. Cook in the crockpot for 8 hours or so (my crockpot is evil hot so usually 7 hours active cooking and then it simmers on warm for while)
Good tortillas and some sour cream and jack cheese make it a pretty decent meal- probably not authentic but my pepper crazy friend begs me for it …
These are pretty brisk. I was having my usual bad reaction to hot peppers while cleaning out the seeds (coughing, etc.), and my fingers were burning later on from not wearing gloves while handling them. I’m thinking perhaps they’re Sandias from your description. Caution when cooking is the active word here, I think.
Make sure not to grab your dick.
Worse is if you have contacts and try to take them out, forgetting you have chile oils on your fingers. I made that mistake twice while handling Thai chiles. I apparently don’t learn from experience. I think I prefer having my dick on fire to my eye. But it is a bit of a Sophie’s choice.
Too late.
No recipe, but I had a great hatch chile cheese steak sandwich for lunch. Yum.
I actually made the hour drive up north from where I live to get 6# of roasted Hatches. The ones they had there were as you describe them–“pretty brisk.” I asked the guy roasting them what type of Hatches they were, and he didn’t know, but the box they were delivered in had four levels of heat marked: mild, medium, hot, extra hot, and the “hot” box was ticked off. I’m guessing they’re probably Sandias. He said last year they had the mild ones and people complained, so they only got hots this year.
These were marked as “hot” at the store where I bought them. But, it being Portland and all, where people think mild salsa is hot, I figured they probably weren’t all that. I was wrong. I put about a tablespoon of minced into a big bowl of tuna today, and could feel the heat.
I do make that, and I do add mushrooms. (But then, I add mushrooms to everything.)
However… I don’t add any broth (I did the first few batches, but kept cutting back until I noticed it didn’t need any at all), and I don’t add potatoes. I serve it over rice, so no need for another big starch. And I don’t consider the tomatoes optional.
And let me tell you, this is really, really good!! I make a huge pot and eat left overs for weeks. I’ve made it with 50/50 pork/chicken and it’s good, but I prefer all pork. I eat so much chicken that it’s nice to have something different.
As much as I love mushrooms, I’ve never added them to green chile stew. That will have to change. I definitely prefer it with the tomatoes, and I think pork is the best meat to use but chicken works well also. For me the potatoes are essential, but I suppose I could try it without and serve it over rice!
Looks good. A couple of options that I’ve picked up over the last couple of years:
Use an entire head of garlic, but roast it. Mash the roasted cloves into a paste and mix it it the chile stew.
Instead of browning the pork, make carnitas and put that in the stew. Sure, it adds about 6 or more hours to the cooking time, but trust me it’s worth it. I usually make the carnitas one day and the stew the next.
Skip the potato and add a can or two of hominy and a bit of oregano to make green chile posole. Add the hominy in the last half hour of cooking the stew, or may the last hour if you like the hominy a bit softer.
After roasting the chile but before peeling it, take a well roasted pepper (preferably one with a well blackened skin) and set it aside. Rather than peeling it, toss it in a blender with some of the broth you are using and blend the hell out of it. It adds more of the roasted flavor to the stew. If I use roasted tomatillos, I also add them to the blender (and what the hell, if I’m using the blender I’ll blend the roasted garlic too). But not the green chiles (except that blackened one), you want nice chunks of green chile in the stew.
Going to get my chile this weekend. Figure I have freezer space for about 40 pounds.
Carnitas would be great in place of browned pork. The hominey sounds good too. I know some people put corn in theirs (along with the potatoes) but turning it into posole is an excellent idea. You guys are coming up with some fine variations; I want to try them all!
Made your recipe today, after trimming down a 3-lb pork shoulder. I ended up using only 1/4 cup of my hatch chilis, and it was plenty. Just enough to zing the back of your throat, not enough to burn your mouth. I could have stood a bit more heat, but we invited our neighbors to partake and I didn’t want to ruin the dish. They lived in NM for many years and pronounced my product as authentic. Served it with cornbread and honey instead of sopas.
I’m glad you enjoyed it! But I don’t see how 1/4 cup of green chiles could possibly be enough for 3 pounds of meat, plus everything else. However, I’ll take your word for it! The basic recipe is great on its own but I’m sure you can see how there is plenty of room to improvise.
Now I had no idea what a Hatch Chili was, so I googled it. Apparently there is technically no such thing as a Hatch Chili, it’s all just very good marketing. They’re just a green pepper grown in a place called Hatch
Yeah even in southern NM, near Hatch, they’re just “chiles”. Buy a bushel and have it roasted in the grocery parking lot.
I know, but these are some hot peppers; hotter than jalapenos, IMO. After trimming the fat off the roast, it was probably less than 2.5 lbs (there was a lot of hard fat). Also, hot peppers and I don’t really get along very well.
You might try mixing in some mild Anaheims to bring the heat down next time. Green chile stew should have lots of green chiles in it.