An Average Joe in San Antonio

It’s that time of year again.  The temperatures are soaring, football season is about to gear up, and Hatch green chiles are in season!  What? Never heard of Hatch green chiles? I guess that they aren’t as common down in South Texas as they are where I’m from in West Texas.

(This post originally appeared on August 19, 2010, but I decided to update it with a video showing how to roast the green chiles!)

Hatch green chiles come from Hatch, New Mexico and are a staple of New Mexican cuisine.  If you have ever taken a trip through New Mexico, you probably noticed that you can get green chiles on practically EVERYTHING – pizza, sandwiches, eggs, and burgers just to name a few (on my last trip up there, I even came across green chile wine!).

While I was born in Texas and definitely have the West Texan accent, my mom is from Santa Fe, NM so green chiles were part of growing up, and I am thankful that they were.  Green chiles can pack a bite that is far different than a serrano or a jalapeño, and also have the possibility of being hotter too.

Central Market has an annual a Hatch Green Chili fest where they bring in green chiles to both Central Market and the other HEB stores.  Every year I have stopped by to pick up some of the chiles and I would be disappointed because it seemed to me like Texas got the “weak sauce.”  This happened to change this year when I went to the HEB Plus on Blanco and 1604.  I bought a couple of pounds of chiles (I mean, they were on sale for $1.29, I had to try!), and man oh man, those boys were the real deal Hollyfield.  My roommate of serrano pepper bet fame had one and it put him on the ground!  I knew I had to go back and get a bunch to roast.  I didn’t even chance going by the HEB closest to my house, I wanted to make sure I got some hot chiles so I picked up about 20 pounds from the Blanco/1604 HEB.

Anyway, since the chiles were good, I figured I would let you know how to roast them so you can enjoy them yourself without having to pay HEB a premium to roast them for you.

This is the site of deliciousness about to be roasted.

First, heat up your grill REAL hot.  Spread out some green chiles across it.  Close the lid and kind of listen for them to sizzle.

Chiles on the grill.

When you hear the sizzle, open the grill up and flip ‘em over.  You want to make sure that the skin is good and blistered.  When you open the grill, breath a deep breath in and enjoy the smell of roasted chiles!

Continue to roast the other side, and even the edges.  Get them where all the skin is blistered.  This will help you peal it off when you are ready to cook them.

I can smell them now...

Prepare a cutting board with a wet towel on top of it.  As your green chiles are ready to come off, place them on this wet towel and then cover them up with another wet towel.  This is to get the steam to continue to cook them.  As I get a good stack of them, I will take the cutting board inside, pull the towels/chiles off, and replace with new towels so they can continue to steam a little bit.

Don't forget to have a damp cloth below and on top of the chiles to steam them when they come off.

Finally, after you are finished cooking the chiles, let them all cool down before you bag them and place them in your freezer.  I put around three to a bag because depending on who will be eating my dish (whether they like hot/medium food), I will use either 3 to 6 green chiles.  Some people choose to take the charred skin off right now, I happen to just wait to do that whenever I defrost them.  HEB says that they last 6 months, but I have been known to let mine freeze for way longer than that.

Get out there are grab some green chiles, because the next couple of days I will be posting a couple of recipes that use them that are family favorites!

Now that you have your roasted Hatch green chiles you might need some recipes:
Mom’s Famous Queso
Green Chile Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas

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I had an absolute blast at Central Market’s Green Chile Cookoff!  It was really cool to visit with the contestants and judges who all have a passion for Hatch Green Chiles.

There were all kinds of recipes ranging from Hatch Puppies, Meatballs, Rice Soup Dish, Tomato Bisque, Chili, Cupcakes, and Chile Chocolate Chile Bread.  But it turns out that the winner and grand champion was a Hatch Chile-Avocado Ice Cream!  Be sure to check out Michael Saiz’s (the Meatball guy) blog for way better pictures than I could take on my iPhone!

Some of the contestants at the cookoff.

I received Honorable Mention, but it really meant a lot the SA Police Chief McManus and Tanji Patton both came up to me and told me how much they enjoyed my recipe!  I ended up getting a $20 Central Market giftcard, and upon leaving the store and smelling the green chiles roasting, I used it to buy a box of hot roasted chiles.

SAPD Chief William McManus an Tanji Patton at the judes table.

Overall, it was quite a day!  Thanks to all the judges and congratulations to all the contestants and winners!

The winner and champion, Adele Williams!

You only have a few more days to grab some Hatch Green Chiles from your HEB down here in San Antonio.  Once you get them, be sure to reference the first post in this series where I show you how to roast your green chiles.  Hopefully you got to use some of your roasted green chiles and tried my Mom’s Famous Queso.  Today, I thought I would go ahead and give you her recipe for green chile sour cream chicken enchiladas.

Here’s what you are going to need:

*1 Fully Cooked Chicken (I can find these are my grocery store; if not you can cook 3-4 chicken breasts on your own)
*1 lb grated cheese Mexican Blend
*1 medium onion chopped
*30 pack of corn tortillas (you’ll probably only use 20)
*3 Hatch Green Chiles (6 to make it really spicy)
*28 oz of chicken broth (use 2 of the 140z cans)
*1/2 cup butter
*4 TBSP flour
*2 cup sour cream (use the 16oz container)
*gang load of vegetable oil

-Preheat oven to 350F
-Heat vegetable oil in a pan on Medium High and dip each tortilla in the oil for about 2-3 seconds (see more detailed explanation below)
-Chop and saute onion, defrost green chile remove charred skin (feel free to de-seed/de-vein the chile to decrease heat) and chop; mix together with shredded chicken and cheese
-In another pan, combine butter and flour and melt
-Add chicken broth and stir; add sour cream and bring to a rolling boil
-Roll chicken mixture in with the tortillas (should make approximately 20-24 enchiladas) and place in pyrex pan
-Pour sour cream sauce on top of the enchiladas
-Cook in the oven for 20 minutes
For more details, read below.

Here's all the ingredients that you are going to need.

Go ahead and get your oven preheated at 350F so it will be ready when you are done rolling all your enchiladas.

Now the first step can be difficult if you are a gringo like me and don’t really make enchiladas on a regular basis.  You might think that corn tortillas are like flour tortillas and are ready to go out of the package.  Not so.  You actually have to dip them in hot oil so that they don’t break.

Pay careful attention to these directions and you’ll be cool (and have a bag of flour nearby in case you start a grease fire).  Get a skillet and fill it up with oil where it will completely cover a tortilla.  Heat up the oil a little bit more than Medium High; you are going to want it to get hot enough that when you dip the tortilla in with tongs it immediately starts bubbling up.

Two Scoops is showing you how to cook the corn tortillas in the hot oil. Be careful not to burn down your house in this step.

When the oil is nice and hot, have a plate with a paper towel square on it.  Dip the tortilla in the oil for a couple of seconds, flip it to the other side, hold it above the oil and let the excess drip down, and then place it on the paper towel.  Put another paper towel square on top of it and repeat the process.  You are eventually going to have a stack of tortillas alternating with paper towels (kind of how you you get cheese slices separated by paper from the deli).  Do this with the exhaust fan on high (so you don’t trip your fire alarm) and BE CAREFUL.  The oil is VERY HOT!  Remember that if a fire does happen, use flour and NOT water to put it out.

While you are cooking your tortillas, place your chopped onion in a skillet nearby with a little bit of oil and saute them where you get a little bit of brown edges.  This will probably be done around the time you are finished with the tortillas.  Place the onions to the side and go and shred the meat from the chicken.  If you buy a cooked chicken from the grocery store, try to get all the meat you can off of it and shred/dice it up using both the white and dark meat.  Otherwise, cook your chicken breasts through and shred the meat.

Mix the chicken, onions, cheese, and diced green chiles (that you have defrosted and de-skinned) all together in the bowl.  I found that the best way to do this is with you hands so that you can get everything mixed up really good.

The chicken, onion, cheese, and green chile mixture. Your hands are a much better mixing utensil than a spoon (just be sure to wash them).

You are now ready to get your sauce going.  Melt the 1/2 cup of butter (one stick) in a pan and mix in the 4 TBSP of flour on Medium High to get good mixture.  You are then ready to stir in the chicken broth for a little while followed by the sour cream.  You will notice chunks that appear in the sauce, keep stirring until you get a nice thick sauce without any lumps.  This is crucial and will make a good sauce; if you rush it will be kind of runny and the ingredients won’t blend together.

Do you see any lumps in the sauce? Nope. Be sure to take your time and you'll get a good, thick, and consistent sauce.

While your sauce is simmering, start rolling your enchiladas with a handful of chicken mixture in each.  Line them up in the pan, and once you are through you should have a 9×13 pan and a 8×8 pan filled with them.  Pour the sauce over both the pans and place them in the preheated 350F oven for 20 minutes. Once the time is up, get ready to eat some of the best enchiladas in the world!

The finished product. Enjoy!

If you read the previous post, you might now be wondering, “So what in the heck do I use green chiles for anyway?”  Any New Mexican would tell you, “Put ‘em on anything!” This could be eggs, stew, burritos, hamburgers, pizza, Subway sandwiches, etc., etc., etc.

While this is all very true (especially the eggs part), you might be looking for something more concrete so I have decided to give you my Mom’s Queso recipe.  Nothing reminds me more of my childhood than this appetizer.  We had it for the big games (both tailgating at Texas Tech football games and for the Superbowl parties), celebrations (graduation, end of school, and birthdays), and family get togethers.  The smell of green chilis always makes me think of my Mom’s Queso and all the happy memories associated with it.

NOTE: This was an honorable mention recipe at the 2010 Central Market Hatch Green Chile Cookoff and is a featured recipe on Tanji Patton’s website!

To get started, you will need the following ingredients:

• 3 roasted hot Hatch green chiles (5-6 if you wanna spice it up) NOTE: Do not attempt this recipe without roasted Hatch green chiles – it just won’t taste right
• Box of Velveeta (32 oz)
• 28oz can of Hunt’s diced tomatoes (the big can)
• 14.5oz can of Hunt’s stewed tomatoes (the little can)

The ingredients - don't make this without the real deal Hatch green chiles!

First, defrost your Hatch green chiles.  I will put them in the microwave on the defrost setting of 0.5 pound of meat and check them periodically.  You definitely don’t want to heat them up so much that you fry them and don’t have any of the meat on the chile left.

While this is happening, you can begin cubing the Velveeta cheese.  Chop them in cubes that are the same size that you see cheddar cheese served parties on toothpicks.  (A side note, this revelation was recently made by one of my mom’s friends from her Clinical Lab Sciences class; we always cubed the cheese in large chunks and it took forever to heat up.  The smaller the cube, the easier to melt!)  Don’t neglect your chiles.

Take the green chiles out of the microwave and remove the black/charred skins from the chiles and throw into the trash (don’t flush down the sink as they might clog it up).  Now you have a choice to make.  From what I am told the hottest part of the chile is the vein and not the seeds (though they are admittedly hot as well).  If you are afraid of how hot the concoction will be, go ahead and “de-vein” and “de-seed” your chiles before you dice them up and throw them in with the cheese.

See the stringy looking thing that goes from the top to the bottom of the green chile? That is the vein; cut it out if you want to tone the queso down.

Next up is to open the large can of diced tomatoes and put them in a colander and strain some of the juice out.  My mom uses the whole can, but I always throw away a handful because I don’t want to risk my queso being soupy.

After that, put the stewed tomatoes in the colander and drain.  Take out all the tomatoes and other vegetables, dice them up (I use all of these tomatoes) and throw them into the queso pot.

At this time, make sure your hands are washed and just give all the ingredients a good mixing.  A note on the queso pot, I use a piece of pottery that was actually made in New Mexico.  My mom had one, so I asked my grandparents for one for a present one Christmas because making my Mom’s Queso in anything else seemed strange.

Heat in the microwave for increments of three minutes and stir after the time is up; repeat this until the queso is smooth and all the cheese is melted.  Trust me, don’t heat longer than three minutes at a time as you might scorch the queso!  I know, I know, I am impatient as well, but queso 10 minutes later is better than getting scorched queso 10 minutes sooner.

If you leave the queso over night or refrigerate the leftovers, the heat from the chiles will increase; I really like it on the second day.  I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as my paternal grandfather.  He always tells my mom, “Thank goodness you married into this family otherwise I would have never had this queso!”

The finished product! Enjoy with some tortilla chips!

I am often asked where my favorite place in town to get a margarita, and I have to say that I really like the margarita’s at El Jarro de Arturo.  I like the Arturo margarita because it is not syrupy or all that sugary sweet.  I one time talked to a waiter about how they make it, and took his advice, added a little more tequila and a twist of orange and have my margarita recipe which is seen below:

*2 shotglasses of Patron Silver
*1 shotglass of Cointreau
*1 shotglass of freshly squeezed lime (using a lime squeezer this is about 2 limes)
*twist of a fresh orange

Combine all ingredients with ice in a shaker; shake and serve in a martini glass.

I like it because you can still taste the tequila (hence the importance of using good tequila) and it just tastes fresh.

That’s it. Simple. Easy. Fresh. Potent.

Be sure to vote for El Clásico inn the Patrón Cocktail Lab on Facebook so that it becomes the most popular margarita!