New Mexico Chile For Dummies!

New Mexico Chile for Dummies!
All the information you need to know about New Mexico Red and Green!

Our Favorite Chile farmer - Joe Lujan's farm North of Las Cruces allows chile-lovers
to pick their own peppers, and offers roasting for a small additional fee.
This year the Lujan family celebrates 70 years of farming on their lands. We've spent
many a summer morning picking peppers there. The lush fields of green chile, the
mountains in the background, the sun, the morning air...shall I go on? A trip to Lujan's is
always a special outing for us, especially if Joe is there. He's always got a smile,
and always makes you feel welcome.

New Mexico Green and Red Chile... Visitors and newcomers to our state (those who think Chili only comes in a can), sometimes ask "What's the big deal, It's only Chile!"
IT'S ONLY CHILE? Those of us who live here in Southern New Mexico know it's not "Just Chile". It's a culture - the rich blending of Spanish, Mexican, and Native American foods. It's an environment - 360 days of sunshine a year, dry air with cool nights. It's people - from the farmers of the fertile Rio Grande Valley to the chile vendors at the Hatch Chile Festival.

Lovely Red and Green New Mexico Chile Peppers
Fruits of the harvest-New Mexico Style!

The world has discovered what we've known here all along...chile is habit-forming!

Whether enjoying dishes made with pungent green chile or mellow dried red peppers, we're hooked! And while the same ingredient in chile that supposedly makes it slightly habit-forming (capsaicin) is also the one that may burn your tongue, it's the delicious variety of flavors in chile cuisine that we love, not just the heat.

For our purposes here, we're not going to explore Jalapenos, Habaneros, Cayenne, or the multitude of other peppers preferred mainly for their heat. When we say "Chile", we'll be talking about the long New Mexico Green/Red types, with names like "Big Jim", "Rio Grande","Sandia", etc. In other parts of the country you'll see similar chile peppers called "Anaheim" peppers. In our neck of the woods, it's "Hatch" or "Mesilla Valley" chile that we crave.

**Two Tasty Chiles...both from the same plant!**

The heat of a chile pepper comes from a chemical called capsaicin, which is found in the membranes surrounding the seeds of the pepper and extending down the pod like "veins". The heat can be reduced somewhat by removing these membranes, along with the seeds. Chile is rich in nutritional value, as well as being delicious! These green beauties which we picked ourselves are ready for roasting and preparation. Late Summer is Chile roasting time! Go Here for instructions on Roasting Green Chile at home.	By Summer's end the green chiles are ripening and changing to a rich ,deep red color. The chile flavor is changing also, becoming sweet and mellow, with a completely different taste from the green pods. All over Southern New Mexico at this time of year you'll see colorful hanging ristras, or strings of red chiles. These are not just pretty to look at. After the chiles are dried, they are the starting point for the lovely red chile sauce which is the basis of a multitude of red chile dishes. Go here for detailed Instructions on how to use Dried Red Chile!

IF YOU HAVE HIGH-SPEED INTERNET , VIEW THESE SHORT VIDEO CLIPS
ON ROASTING GREEN CHILE AND WORKING WITH DRIED RED CHILE

Southern New Mexico's "Chile Trail"
(Why not ? They've got their "Turquoise Trail" up north!)

Chile peppers are grown all over New Mexico, but the major commercial production is in the Southern part of the state, concentrated roughly along what we've dubbed "The Chile Trail" shown at right. Traveling from west to east, you pass through Hidalgo, Luna, and Dona Ana counties, the state's three largest chile producers. Make a jaunt up to Hatch, the "Chile Capital of the World". Heading east, enjoy the desert and mountain scenery from Las Cruces to Artesia, but there's not much chile growing on that leg of the trip. Then from Artesia eastward you'll pass through Eddy and Lea counties, two more fairly large producers. After that, you're in Texas, where it's strictly "Chili"...with an "i", a whole different story!

Okay, what's the difference between "Chile" (with an "e"), and "Chili" (with an "i")?
Order "chile" in New Mexico and the immediate response is usually "Red or Green?" Chile as we know it here is a variety of dishes where the major ingredient is either fresh green chile, or a sauce made from rehydrated dry red chile pods.

Chili, on the other hand, is more of a soup, made with meat and various other ingredients, seasoned with a mixture of powdered chile and other spices. Don't get us wrong...we occasionally enjoy a good bowl of Chili, but we've come to demand much more than ground beef, beans, and cheese of our Chile!

Need more information about New Mexico chile? Check out the following Links:
The Chile Pepper Institute - Maintained by the New Mexico State University College of Agriculture & Home Economics, this site contains a lot of information about chile peppers.
The Hatch Chile Express - We're often contacted by folks needing a source of chile products. This website offers fresh green chile (in season), and a variety of dried chile products.
Sunny Conley's "Chile Knights" Article Archives - Sunny is Southern New Mexico's authority on "all things chile". These articles from her popular "Chile Knights" newspaper column contain a wealth of information and humor.