A New Mexico Tradition

Certain states are known for particular things.  Iowa has its corn.  Wisconsin has its cheese.  Georgia has its peaches.  Illinois has its honest governors.  In case you weren't aware, New Mexico is proud of its green chiles.

About half way through the journey between here and my parents' home in Tucson, AZ, we pass through a tiny town (less than 2000 people) called Hatch, NM.  Hatch is where many if not most of New Mexico's green chiles are harvested.  This is one of my favorite signs in Hatch that we pass:

Hatch, NM

Leni and I have been cooking with green chiles ever since we arrived in New Mexico and until this point, we've been limited to frozen ones.  It is now, however, chile season!  At the store, green chiles can be purchased in bulk.  It's fantastic.   

Today was green chile day at the Moore house.  After church, we went to the store, and bought a 30 lb bag of hot green chiles (we don't mess around here).

After paying for them inside the store, we took them outside where a nice man placed them in a giant roaster to roast them up.  I won't try to explain how wonderful the place smells.  Just trust me that it is heavenly.

When the chiles were done roasting (10 minutes maybe?), we took them home and got to work.  The skins needed to be peeled off.  We placed them in a bath of ice water which really helped.  The skins came off much easier than when we tried without the ice water.  I would sit at the table and peel them and then Leni would come get them and rinse them in the sink to get final skin remnants and seeds off.

Notice lack of goatee...happens every summer

Once the chiles were completely peeled and rinsed, the final step was to place them in bags for freezing.

We are now set for many months of cooking with fresh green chiles as opposed to the canned stuff from the grocery store.

In case anyone is wondering, this truly was time-consuming project.  Including a break for Leni to mow before it started raining, and about a combined hour's worth of phone calls I took, this process took us between 6 and 7 hours.  Ridiculous.

Of course we had to try them out!  For dinner, we tried a burrito recipe from our Green Chile Bible cookbook.  I really enjoyed it.  Check it out here!

Keep It Real!