Green Chile Harvest

It is Fall here in the ABQ. One of the best signs of the fall is chile* harvest. New Mexico produces over 60,000 tons of chile annually and is renown the world over for having great chile- best in the world according to the BBC (but what do the English know about flavor?). New Mexico takes its spicy very seriously. The state question is "Red or green?" - meaning do you want your food smothered in the citrusly piquant green or the firey and smokey red chile? The harvest starts in late summer and continues to the first frost, which is probably about 2 weeks away now.

This weekend, Ali and I joined some good friends to prepare and freeze our batch of chile for the next year. We went to a local Sichler Farms outlet and got a sack of chile (approximately 35 lbs). It is then roasted in a big rotating drum with gouts of flame until the skins are blackened (see the movie at the end of this post for some live footage of our chile). A little time steaming in a sealed plastic bag, then the chile can be easily peeled, chopped, and frozen for consumption. For us, this goes in everything from breakfast eggs, green chile sauce, meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, and our favorite - green chili stew.

After a good 2 hours of peeling, chopping, and bagging, our haul for the year was ready for for the freezer. Since we are sans kitchen now, we didn't even get to taste some before we put it in the freezer. Maybe we can make green chili stew in the crock pot......

*Note: the whole chili versus chile thing. Here in New Mexico, it is chile. Chili is made by Texans and midwesterners.