Let’s start by buying our Chiles. For you folks around New Mexico and southwest Colorado you’ll probably find Chiles at markets that offer roasting if you buy a case. Buying that way is really a good and fast process. They roast them and put them into a plastic bag, so they sweat and put the bag back in the box and you are on your way.
For you that don’t have that option or don’t want that many Chiles, here is what we do. Before I start there are many ways to roast Chiles, this is just how we do it.
Start with the buying process. Go to the produce section of your market and find the “Green Chiles” AKA Hatch Chiles. If your grocery store does not carry them, you can ask them to order them. They are available through both Affiliate Foods and Associated Grocers usually.
We pick out nice long, straight, meaty looking Chiles and head on home. Now the fun (??) begins.
We have a 6 burner, propane BBQ. We light the three right burners with the infra-red burner being the farthest right. We then start rolling the Chiles with long handled tongs slowly from left to right. When they get to the infra-red, we turn and turn them until they are totally roasted. (This means pretty much totally black.) When they are roasted, we immediately drop them into a large bowl of ice water and go back to moving more Chiles toward the infra-red. When you have a few over the infra-red you will want to close the lit for a few minutes to keep in as much heat as possible. This will encourage the chiles to blacken quicker.
After your roasted Chiles have been blanched, we move them into the kitchen sink into more cold ice water. We let them sit there until we complete roasting all of our Chiles. If done correctly the black skin should easily peel off.
We then put several Chiles into a pint size Ziplock bag which we in turn place into a gallon size Ziplock or vacuum seal and place in the freezer. When we vacuum seal, we leave a lot of room at the top of the bag to allow you to open the bag, take out a pint size Ziploc or two and reseal the bag.
A bit labor intensive but if done right, you’ll have Chiles whenever you want.
Equipment List:
Long handled tongs – you’ll want stainless steel with a stay cool grip.
Vacuum Sealer – You may want to look at our “Vacuum Sealers Review“.
Patty & Doug