What Can I Do With Hatch Green Chile?

chiseeds

Chileheads will put green chile into just about anything.  A co-worker once put out a plate of chocolate brownies with green chiles (they all got eaten).

I’m not that obsessed, but there here are some tested ideas, other than green chile sauce (recipe here), burritos, enchiladas, rellenos, huevos rancheros, and other historic New Mexico dishes.

  • Tuna salad — just add to your favorite recipe
  • Cornbread
  • Macaroni and cheese
  • Cheeseburgers, with lettuce, tomato, pickle, and mustard (no ketchup)
  • Grilled cheese sandwiches
  • Open up a whole, fresh-roast green chile, salt and pepper, lay a slice of provolone, jack, or cheddar cheese on top, roll it up and eat it while it’s warm (not hot).
  • This sounds awful, but sauté some banana slices in butter or oil, add some chopped green chiles and heat them up, and put the mix over fried eggs on a corn tortilla.  It’s a simplified version of huevos motuleños.

What Not to Do With Green Chiles

Green chile seems like a natural to put into an Italian tomato sauce to make it spicy, but green chile is terrible in Italian food.  However, dried red chile flakes are a staple in spicy Italian dishes.

By the way, “Hatch” green chiles are just the chiles grown around Hatch, New Mexico.  They are no better or worse than any New Mexican variety of green chiles grown anywhere else in the state, for example, Lemitar. “Hatch” is an effective marketing term.