Green Chili: How to Roast This Delicacy

There are few things that smell as good as the towns in New Mexico in the fall. This is the time they roast green chili out in the open and the fragrant essence of roasting chili is strong enough to drop you to your knees. Sometimes they roast it in big cylindrical open flame roasters that blast out sounds like a hot air balloon. The wonderful smell fills the air and makes your mouth water. It is almost indescribable. To put it in perspective it smells way better than microwave popcorn does.

The type of cooking in New Mexico is called southwestern cuisine not Mexican. Mexican cooking is a whole lot different than southwestern cooking. If you doubt me try some genuine dishes from both and you will understand. Some people mistakenly call this Tex-Mex. Again, not exactly right. Tex-Mex is just that, a mixture of southern Texas taste with Mexican taste. Southwestern food is a tasty conglomeration of Spanish, Anglo and Native American food. These are tamales, pasole, empanadas, toasted corn, etc. married with every traditional American dish you can think of. In fact in New Mexico it is far more common to see someone noshing on a something wrapped in a tortilla rather than sandwiched between two pieces of bread. And there must be green chili somewhere in the dish, on the side, or coming to the table.

The most commonly roasted chili in New Mexico is the Anaheim. It is a long slender green pepper with a tangy sweet flavor. In order to roast this pepper it must be clean, green, and fresh. If left to grow older on the vine the Anaheim turns red in color and dries up. These chili's are used entirely differently than the green peppers. And do not get into a discussion about which tastes better, red or green, in New Mexico this could and has led to trouble.

Clean the peppers and pat them dry. Next I spray them with a small amount of cooking oil. I place them on a cookie sheet and broil them. As they hiss and sputter I make sure to turn them so they are uniformly toasted on all sides. There is an art to doing this correctly. The color of a properly roasted green chili is brownish black. As I remove them from the sheet I roll them in a soft towel and let the steam soften the skins. This also cools the peppers. After they cool I sit down with a friend and a soda and began to hand peel the skins off the delicate green flesh. Discard the skins and place the chili 'meat' in a bowl. It is all done by hand. The odors are gloriously awesome. I pour a little garlic powder on the chili and now it's ready for the likes of green chili stew, juevos rancheros, green chili and sour cream enchiladas, you name it the sky's the limit.

Hatch, New Mexico is world famous for its delicious variety of green chili peppers. But there are Anaheim peppers right now in your produce department wherever you are just waiting to be roasted. Be careful, don't get burned and it might take some experimentation but it will all be well worth it. You will believe me when you first smell roasting green chili peppers.