How to Have Hatch Year-Round

It's is the perfect time of year for those who love Hatch Green Chilies.  Our local upscale market celebrates Chili-fest with these New Mexico specialities by the case, roasted, fresh, or by weight.  As you journey through the store, your creative juices flow along with your salavary glands.  They use Hatch Chili in every department: dairy, breads, soup, cheese, meat, and even desserts. 

My family usually purchases a case of the fresh, unroasted chilies to prepare so that we have them year-round for our cooking.  Since our daughter lives with us and doesn't have flameproof tastebuds, we get the mild ones. 

Keep the case in the fridge until you are ready to prep them for the freezer. 

I am fairly low key about my prep.  This doesn't mean it doesn't take time - it is a whole case of chilies after all - but I don't fuss over them.  You will want to have a good sharp knife, a large capacity food processor, a couple bowls/pots for the throw-away part and another for the good stuff. Lots of quart plastic zipper bags.  I also get the multi-gallon bags to put the filled quart bags into.  Peppers can overpower whatever else you have in the freezer so double bagging helps keep this from happening.  It also keeps all your peppers in one handy place. 

I chop off the top of the pepper.  Cut the bulk of the seed pods out (throw away unless you garden).  Slice the pepper in half.  If it has a particularly thick seam, I cut that out, otherwise I leave it for a bit of heat along with the remaining seeds.  The heat of a pepper is found in the seam and seeds.

Some peppers get sliced for quicker grilling.  Just cook them right from the freezer.  My husband uses his cast iron pans for our chilies.  Chopped or sliced - they roast up beautifully and flavorfully for burgers, steaks, chops...!!!

When chopping the peppers, I use the food processor.  I fill it fairly full then pulse for a couple seconds a time.  If you have a pepper that doesn't want to be processed, just do a couple rapid pulses to force the issue. I pulse until I have the consistency my family likes, somewhere between chunks and pulverized.

If you are going to use the chilies in corn bread, a dip, or something which doesn't take the liquid associated with freezing then thawing - just thaw the peppers first, put them in a paper towel and squeeze out the excess juice.  Be careful though - this juice has a kick.  You might not want to touch your face after this process!  If you like zing in your food, consider substituting the pepper juice (in part or in full) for other liquids in the recipe.

If you want to add chilies to your chili or soup, just dump in the frozen cluster from the bag. I LOVE the unroasted, chopped chilies in tortilla soup and corn chowder.

We froze 26 half-filled quart bags of chopped and 10 bags of sliced - from our one case.