In many parts of the country, the first real signs of fall have to do with leaves changing, when there’s a chill in the air, and the days get shorter. But, here in the Southwest, fall has its own flavor: when you start to see hatch chiles on the shelves at the grocery store or, if you’re really lucky, it’s when you smell them roasting outside of the supermarket in those big, rotating roasters.
And while these iconic peppers are only grown in Hatch, New Mexico, the season has really become a hallmark of this transitional time of year throughout the Southwest. Jackie Alpers, Tucson-based cookbook author and food photographer, joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
JACKIE ALPERS: I remember when I first moved to Tucson 30-plus years ago, I was amazed that in the late summer and early fall, they would have these hatch chili roasters outside of the grocery stores. I'd never seen anything like that before.
GILGER: Yeah.
ALPERS: So they’d have these big metal roasting containers would spin and you could smell the chiles roasting as you walked up to the store. And I remember thinking that was so special, but even now, I'm amazed at how much it has evolved to becoming just something that everybody really anticipates, every grocery store is, like, really celebrating it to the point of, like, Fry’s had me write a recipe and they're having recipe cards in the stores and special, like, little things like they're really, they've really latched on to the whole hatch chili excitement. Everyone now kind of gets that it's hatch chile season.
GILGER: It's like a sign of fall in Arizona, right?
ALPERS: It is.
GILGER: That's an exciting thing after a long and hot summer.
ALPERS: Oh, for sure. It's a little bit earlier than like, you know, than the Halloween or pumpkins and all that. So, it really is a wonderful kind of transitional moment.
GILGER: I love that. I love that. OK. So, let's talk about the flavor profile of a hatch chile because it really is distinct. It does not taste like any other kind of chile, maybe closest to a Poblano or an Anaheim. How would you describe it?
ALPERS: I think it's probably closer to an Anaheim. Of course, the Anaheim chiles are coming out of Anaheim, California, for the most part, and the hatch chiles are coming out of Hatch, New Mexico. And so, there is a difference kind of based on terroir, just like a wine.
The hatch chiles, they have more of an earthiness, they're a little bit more complex in flavor. They don't taste as, I would say Anaheim chiles taste green, you know what I mean? They have that kind of green, raw flavor. Whereas the hatch, of course, they also taste green even when they're kind of starting to turn orange and red. But the flavor is much more complicated. It definitely almost feels more from the earth, if that makes sense.
GILGER: It does, it does. How spicy are they? Because it seems to be different every time I try one.
ALPERS: Oh, my goodness. They can range in spice from very mild to very, very hot.
GILGER: OK.
ALPERS: And in fact, I visited a chile roaster at the farmers market this week to see what he had in stock because they're roasting chiles right now at the farmers markets, as well as supermarkets. And he said that he only had the super hot chiles left, everything else was sold out, and he showed me that you can tell the difference between the super hot that they're kind of thinner and they've got like a pointier tip. So, he gave me a couple to take home because I usually go for medium, and I will tell you they are incredibly hot.
GILGER: So let's then, let's talk some recipes here, some ideas. I think there are some obvious things where you're going to see hatch chilies used every year, you know, and enchiladas maybe in a, in a stew or something like that. What are some of the hatch chile recipes that are your go-tos, and that are maybe, you know, a little bit offbeat?
ALPERS: Well, I don't know if it's offbeat for, for Arizona, but I really love machaca and eggs. I'll take machaca, which is the dried shredded beef that you can get at a lot of the meat markets around town. It's already come shredded and all you have to do is pan fry it with the diced hatch chiles, which you can either roast in advance or just use as is, and onions and tomatoes and then mix that all in with scrambled eggs and it is fantastic.
GILGER: That sounds amazing, absolutely. What a good breakfast, and using them in a breakfast is a cool idea, yeah. So, let's move through the meals then. What about when it comes to lunch, dinner recipes? Where do you like to use hatch chiles? Where have you seen them lately?
ALPERS: Well, I see them all the time on cheese crisps, which is a, a really common Arizona kind of staple. I've been making caldo de queso. So I'm feeling kind of fall right now with the big chunks of potatoes and green chiles and kind of a clear broth. Of course, there's always chile verde, which is either pork or beef cubes and like a green chile stew, which is very popular around here. It's served in tortillas or in tacos or burritos. Oh, also, I've been really enjoying green corn tamale pie. It's kind of like all this stuff from inside of a green corn tamale, put into a pie shell and then baked and then I'll do a mole on top. So it's, it's a nice kind of almost like a rich creamy kind of consistency of like a bread pudding, I guess. And then, with the mole on top, it becomes a fantastic kind of vegetarian meal with a, you know, mole is not really that sweet, but there's always that like kind of chocolatey chili kind of vibe, which is a fun one.
GILGER: You're making me hungry. Jackie, can you use a hatch chile in a dessert? Is this something you've ever done?
ALPERS: Well, I haven't, but I should because as soon as you started talking about hatch green chiles and desserts, I started thinking, “oh, what about like hatch green chile ice cream”? You know, where there's that creaminess and maybe even has like you could even use corn and, and ice cream.
I make a corn paletas, which are the popsicles, and then you could dip them or add a little bit of green chile powder in with that. And, in fact that reminds me, that a really great thing that you can do with an abundance of green chiles is turn them into chili powder and then you can make your own spice blends, like you'd mix that green chile powder with salt and then you've got a chile salt or any kind of chile blends, you could do all kinds of great stuff
GILGER: That brings me to the question about storing, right? Because if you have a lot and it only comes around once a year, what do you do with them? How do you keep them?
ALPERS: Yeah. There's a variety of things that you can do. As I said, the, the drawing, which is really easy. All you have to do is slice them into rings, and then dehydrate them in a food dehydrator, and then you could either store them like that or you could grind them into a powder using a coffee grinder, when that's specifically for that because you don't wanna have, well, I mean, that actually might be good.
GILGER: Green chili coffee is not the worst idea I've ever heard.
ALPERS: It might be awesome, you can also roast them in advance and then freeze them. And so you, you know, in batches just like you would in abundance of any other kind of fresh vegetable.
GILGER: Can you pickle them?
ALPERS: Oh, yes, you can pickle them. You can do the quick pickles just like you would jalapenos, you know, it's very easy to quickly pickle something or you could do like the more traditional canning methods where you heat up the bottle and make sure everything is sterilized appropriately so that it will keep her for a long time. That's a great idea.
GILGER: All right, we will leave it there. That is Jackie Alpers, is a cookbook author and food photographer based in Tucson, joining us to talk about hatch chili season, Jackie, thanks so much.
ALPERS: Thanks for having me.
