Chile Colorado

Homesick for Santa Fe, and going through severe chile withdrawal, I stumbled upon a big bag of roasted, dried, Hatch red Barker chiles at a local grocery. SCORE!



Here they are destemmed and cooking, along with the usual spices.



The finished red chile sauce. It has some heat and it rocks!

Depending on the use, some of this might get strained to remove seeds. But I generally don't bother.

What to make tonight? Enchiladas? Burritos? Hmmm ....

YUM!!! You've made my mouth water, and it's only 7.30am.

Do you ever bottle and store your chile sauce, Cyn, or do you just eat it up within a couple of weeks? Thanks.

This isn't the kind of chile sauce one uses mainly as a condiment (although I like to dip French fries in it!). It's an integral part of New Mexican recipes, the sauce in the dish. So, no, I don't bottle this up.

However, it freezes really well. So I will freeze some of this to have later. I still have half a bag of the chiles left, but am planning on buying more before they are gone!!

It's a simple thing to prepare.

Take about 8 ounces of dried New Mexico chiles (that's a lot of chiles... 25-30). Remove the stems.

Put them in a big pot with 4 cups of water. Add about half a medium onion, chopped. A few cloves of garlic, minced. Some generous grinds of black pepper. A couple teaspoons of oregano. A shake of salt, if you like. (I leave it out.)

Let it all simmer together for an hour or more. Puree it in a blender in batches.

Voila! Chile colorado.

This is very thick and is usually thinned somewhat when you make the dish.

(I use this in breakfast dishes all the time, Celia! )

Homesick for Santa Fe, and going through severe chile withdrawal, I stumbled upon a big bag of roasted, dried, Hatch red Barker chiles at a local grocery. SCORE!



Here they are destemmed and cooking, along with the usual spices.



The finished red chile sauce. It has some heat and it rocks!

Depending on the use, some of this might get strained to remove seeds. But I generally don't bother.

What to make tonight? Enchiladas? Burritos? Hmmm ....

Cynthia, this looks great! I'll need to see if I can find those peppers around here. What quantity does 25-30 make?

Um. I've never measured.

Probably something between 4 and 6 cups. I think.

Cynthia,
Do you toast the chiles before putting them into water? That's a technique I learned from Mark Miller, and it's really quite useful for these sorts of things.

Mark Lipton

Do you toast the chiles before putting them into water? That's a technique I learned from Mark Miller, and it's really quite useful for these sorts of things.

Oops. I do. I omitted that in my steps. It's just so routine for me. I spread them on a couple cookie sheets after destemming and toast them at 325F for about 10 minutes.

Cynthia, I can get dried chilies here in Lexington as we in the last several year have acquired a largish Hispanic population. I do not recall seeing any though that are as red as those in your picture. I also have some dried peppers that Larry sent me as well has a couple pounds of mild and medium heat powdered chilies. I suppose I could make the red sauce from them but if I use the dried ones and they are dark, what is the result going to be like? Thanks in advance. Larry if you read this chime in.

I have a chile colorado recipe that uses powdered chiles and I use it frequently. I believe I posted it some time ago. I'll look.

Okay, see my chile colorado thread. Have fun.