A Chile Verde Recipe

I’ve been asked, me being a native New Mexican and all, if I have any good chile recipes. Of course I do. I figured I’d share a simple variant of the one done most often in our home. We always have this green chile sauce available to put on everything from burritos to baked potatoes to just eating it straight with chips. This recipe isn’t exactly the one we make (have to keep some family secrets, after all), but it serves as the foundation for any way you’d like to tweak it to make it your own. This recipe is vegetarian, of course.

Ingredients:

3lb Green Chile
    (roasted and peeled)
1 1/2 Tbs All-purpose flour
1 Tbs Oil
1 1/2 Tbs Kosher Salt
      (plus more to taste)
1 1/2 Tbs Garlic powder
      (granulated garlic)
2/3 C diced tomatoes
      (fresh or canned)
Water

Directions:

Chop the chile into a fine dice–about 1/4″. Save any liquid.

In a medium-to-large pot, add the flour and the oil and stir over a medium heat to form a paste (roux). DO NOT let it burn.  If it burns, you’ll have to start over. I’ve found it best to start with a cold pan.

When roux is formed, at the chiles along with any liquid from them that you saved. Combine with the roux and cook over high heat while stirring for a few minutes.

Add water to just cover. Add salt, garlic powder, and tomatoes. Stir and bring to a boil. Once at a boil, bring down to a simmer. Add more salt or garlic powder to taste (usually it’s just an extra tsp of salt). Keep at a simmer, stirring occasionally, for 1/2-to-1 hour.

And then you get to enjoy a taste of the old country that is much better than what you get out of any bottle or jar…or even most restaurants (New Mexico restaurants included).

Common variants include: adding some form of meat (beef/pork/chicken/or a veggie substitute), using broth instead of water (warn your veggie friends if you do this), pureeing the mixture into a salsa verde, using fresh-roasted tomatillos instead of tomatoes (don’t used canned tomatillos…they’re nasty), and so much more. Like I said, this recipe is just a foundation. It makes somewhere around 2qts (2 liters) of product (more if you make it soupier). We make this much because we like to freeze at least half of it so we aren’t having to make chile everyday.

See also: The Sweet Smell of August Chile