Roasted!

Chile Roasting Weekend has come to a close for this Someday Cowgirl and her hunky hubby. Now it’s time to enjoy the fruits of our labor, green chiles! Sixty pounds of them. Straight from Hatch, New Mexico, the green chile capital of the world.

For two full days, we (well, mostly hubby, the chile master of the Midwest) roasted, sweated and prepped three varieties of peppers, Big Jim, Sandia and Lumbre for freezing. Now, throughout the year, we have the luxury to pluck a bag out of our downstairs freezer anytime we feel the need to cook up any of our favorite green chile recipes. 

We’ve got medium hot, hot, and extreme caution hot chiles to work with.

A true labor of love, our annual Chile Roasting Weekend begins immediately after the boxes of pungent, smoky fruits are delivered to our doorstep from the Hatch Chile Store.

Why do we go through all of this, you ask? Because after many visits to Santa Fe, we became obsessed with New Mexico cuisine and its power player ingredient, the green chile. They don’t grow well, or perhaps at all in our local soil; therefore, we go straight to the source for them.

After three seasons of experimentation, we’ve (again my husband) become experts in the roasting arena. 

The master himself even created a roasting machine to facilitate the process, because a standard gas grill just doesn’t get it.

All of the hard work is realized in the end though. 

Now we’ve got our chile stash for the entire year, so we can enjoy our enchiladas, breakfast burritos, tacos, burgers and anything under the sun that you can imagine putting green chiles on. 

Jealous? I thought you might be. 

Here’s to a year of green chile cookin’ from our sacred stash. 

If you’re looking for some hot recipes for green chiles, some of my favorites are listed in my recipe index on the right. 

What’s next for these two chile crazed lovers?  I’m smelling a local wine and chile fiesta in our future.