A Hatch Chile Pepper-orama

I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico a couple of weekends ago. The place has really grown on me in the last couple of years. It's a perfect place to escape Dallas heat in August...and a wonderfully relaxing place. There's not much to do except walk around and check out the stores and galleries.

Oh, and eat.

I had some delicious meals over my long weekend. Stacked enchiladas. Tapas. Pupusas. Guacamole. Posole. Chile rellenos. I came back home culinarily inspired. What perfect timing then that it was Hatch Chile Festival time at Central Market. Armed with advice from other more experienced chile heads, I set out to tame the Hatch beast.

I knew I wanted to have plenty. I had several recipes to try, plus wanted to dice some and freeze them for other uses (omelettes, casseroles, etc.) later on. The little devils are only available at this time of the year...and the Anaheims you can get year-round are poor substitutes.

Rather than pay the $25 a box to have them roasted for me, I loaded up a couple of grocery bags with about 10 pounds of peppers and went to work. Turned the gas grill on full-blast and dumped a single layer of peppers on and closed the lid. The thermometer said it was about 450° in there. I let them go for 5 or 6 minutes and then turned them. You want them to blister and blacken so that you can peel them easily.


Took them off the grill and put them in a large bowl and covered them tightly with foil. Let them steam for about 20 minutes...until they were cool enough to handle. Then went to work. Folks suggest using rubber gloves for this step, but I found that I lost to much dexterity when I put them on. I had taken my contacts out as a precaution and didn't seem to get too much chile on my hands.


Peeled the papery skin off the peppers...some more easily than others. The ones that emerged whole were set aside to become chile rellenos. Others went into a pile for slicing and dicing.


Experts say don't rinse them, but I did. I found it much easier to get last bits of peel and seeds out that way. The whole ones went onto a cookie sheet for the first freeze. (That way, they won't stick together in the bag.) Others were diced and packaged in 1/2 cup measures. (Hint: One pound of fresh peppers yields about one cup of roasted product.)


I started using them immediately. That very night, I made green chile sauce for stacked enchiladas and fried up some chile rellenos. Stay tuned for those reports in the very near future.