Hatch Chile

Chile is a staple here.  We eat it on and with everything (burgers and pizza included).  It is full of vitamins and minerals and makes for the perfect of comfort foods.  When ordering it on your food, you'll always be asked, "Red, Green or Christmas?"  Christmas means having both red and green sharing your plate.  I have always preferred green chile, but red is beginning to nudge it's way into my heart, too...it just has to be cooked just right...but that's another story.

Growing up, we ate chile every once in a while at home, but it was a special treat to go to Tomasita's Restaurant and enjoy what I've always believed to be the best green chile in town (now I also believe they have the best Swirls in the world...a frozen margarita "swirled" with Sangria...but that's another story, too).

As a Little One I always ordered my chile on the side, and I remember the pride I felt the first time I was able to order and eat my burrito smothered in chile.  Good times :-)

As an adult, I have begun the tradition of purchasing my chile in bulk and getting it roasted onsite before bringing it home to let it steam up and cool down before bagging it up and freezing it.

The amount of chile purchased was always determined by the size of my freezer, so in the beginning my purchases weren't incredibly large.  Regardless of how little I purchased, I always felt it was worth it since the little store bought pints of chile in plastic tubs don't ever really stack up in comparison.

When Tool Lady and I purchased our home 5 years ago, we decided it would be necessary to purchase a chest freezer in order to store our new batch of chile each year.  There are other things in the freezer, too, but we did actually purchase it with chile in mind.

Yeah...it's a that important.

We have learned that 2-3 sacks of chile is enough to get us through a year of burrito/enchilada/quesadilla/omelette-smothered-in-chile eating so that's what we purchase and process each year.  The cost is right around $100 and pales in comparison to what it would cost if we purchased the above mentioned tubs throughout the year.

We have also learned that it is much better to purchase from the farmer than the store.  Cut out the middle man and get to know some real people  :-)  Our favorite people to purchase chile from are the nice folks at Berridge Farms.  They always set up shop in the big parking lot behind Tecolote and are a joy to deal with.  The young woman who takes the orders and handles the money has a mind like a steal trap...I swear, her brain remembers everything despite so many different orders, faces and side requests.

Occasionally, if you purchase your chile later in the season, it will also include a few that have begun to their shift to red (green chile is unripe red chile).  This is a good thing because, not only is it pretty, but it adds a touch of wonderful deep, almost smokey taste to the chile.  This year, though, Berridge Farms were actually offering sacks of red chile along side their sacks of green!  Oh, happy day!  So, we purchased 2 sacks of green and a 1/2 sack of red, had them roasted separately (the roasting times are different) and then mixed them together later.

In past years we've always frozen our chile in quart sized freezer bags, but this year we decided to switch it up a bit and try canning it all!  See, the problem with freezing it is that, after a long day at work, the last thing you want to do is thaw a bag of chile, peel it, then cook it up to make your dinner.  The other side of the coin here is, if we were to experience a loss in power for TEOTWAWKI or whatever, we would lose all of our chile!  Now, you can't live on chile alone, but it is absolutely a comfort food, and if the shit hits the fan, I'm going to want some comfort ;-)

So, while the work put in ahead of time is incredibly intense (peel, rinse, chop, repeat at least a thousand time), our joys throughout the rest of the year will be apparent every time we pull out a jar of chile and simply simmer it on the stove to prep for dinner.

Following the green chile canning guidelines provided by New Mexico State University we prepped and pressure canned 54 pints of chile which are now sitting happily on the shelf waiting to be consumed.  It took Tool Lady and I 10 full hours of processing and waiting for the jars to come out of the canner.  Holy cow, were we tired!

Sore backs aside, it was so worth the time it took.  Very good times, indeed.