{"id":1592,"date":"2017-06-21T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T15:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/villasentieri.com\/?post_type=recipe&p=1592"},"modified":"2026-09-02T10:59:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:59:19","slug":"new-mexican-red-chile-sauce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/villasentieri.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/21\/new-mexican-red-chile-sauce\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mexican Red Chile Sauce"},"content":{"rendered":"

June 21, 2017<\/span><\/p>\n

I come by a love of spicy food honestly.\u00a0\u00a0 I grew up in a family with a strong Southern Italian heritage and a love of spicy foods.\u00a0 There was usually one, if not two, types of hot salami in the fridge.\u00a0 My Uncle Joe Medile made the hot Italian sausage that we ate frequently and when my father said it wasn\u2019t spicy enough, as he always did, the next batch was spicier still.\u00a0 My cousin Angie put up hot peppers (her recipe is coming in the autumn).\u00a0 Another Uncle ate sandwiches of fried hot peppers from his garden.\u00a0 I still have hot salami in my fridge, and I make sausage and jarred hot peppers and eat fried pepper sandwiches!<\/p>\n

I could go on but you get the picture.<\/p>\n

In college, I fell in with a crowd of friends from all around the world, quite a number of whom were into fiery foods; foods so hot that they made anything with a European sensibility (like Italian food) seem like child\u2019s play.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t surprising that when I first ate New Mexican food in 1991, I was hooked by Red Chile and Green Chile.<\/p>\n

New Mexican chile (and it is<\/em> spelled chile, with an \u201ce\u201d on the end) at the most basic is a sauce.\u00a0 Go into any New Mexican restaurant and order a burrito and the wait person, without missing a beat, will say \u201cRed or Green?\u201d unless you are in the know enough to have made your choice of chile part of the order in the first place.\u00a0 The sauce will be poured over the burrito before serving.\u00a0 If you are indecisive, you can have \u201cChristmas\u201d which will get you half red chile and half green chile.<\/p>\n

New Mexican Chile has nothing in common with chili, whether it\u2019s Tex-Mex, Cincinnati, or any other version.\u00a0 There is Green Chile Stew which contains pork (usually) and is served in a bowl like, well, a stew.\u00a0 But you won\u2019t get Green Chile Stew if you ask for Green Chile.\u00a0 You\u2019ll get a sauce.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve collected lots of Red Chile recipes from friends; eaten Red Chile scores, if not hundreds of times in restaurants; and researched Red Chile in old cookbooks.\u00a0 I take a very traditional approach to what goes into my Red Chile, and it\u2019s not much.<\/p>\n

I think a traditional Red Chile should be made with ingredients that would have been available in the small, isolated farming communities in Northern New Mexico where the dish was perfected.\u00a0 When I see recipes that purport to taste traditional, if not be<\/em> traditional, that contain things like raisins, chipotle in adobo, and Asian fish sauce, I sigh.<\/p>\n

Mind you, those ingredients, and other equally incongruous ingredients (like frozen orange juice concentrate!), might make a tasty sauce but it would not be New Mexican Red Chile!<\/p>\n

Red Chile should taste of chile with other ingredients used in small quantities to complement the chile.\u00a0\u00a0 In my case those ingredients are garlic and salt.\u00a0 Period!<\/p>\n

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New Mexican Red Chile Pods<\/strong><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before the advent of refrigeration, Red Chile, which is made from dried fully ripened, i.e. red, chile pods, was eaten most of the year.\u00a0 Green Chile, made from roasted, freshly harvested green chile pods, was eaten at harvest time.<\/p>\n

Next month I\u2019m going to post my favorite New Mexican recipe, Carne Adovada, slow-cooked pork cubes in an abundant amount of red chile sauce.\u00a0 The Red Chile in this post is an integral part of the process.\u00a0 If you want to give the Carne Adovada a try you might want to practice making Red Chile.\u00a0 If you\u2019re at a loss for what to do with it, consider using it as a sauce on steak, chops or scrambled eggs.\u00a0 Pour it over mashed potatoes.\u00a0 Make burritos and smother them in red chile.<\/p>\n

Before moving to New Mexico full time, we spent almost every holiday in Santa Fe.\u00a0 We always invited a large crowd of friends over for Thanksgiving dinner.\u00a0 Since we would leave Santa Fe to return to Chicago on the Saturday or Sunday after Thanksgiving, leftovers became a problem.\u00a0 We quickly developed the tradition of having all of our Thanksgiving guests back for dinner on Friday which consisted of leftovers.\u00a0 The only new addition to the meal, though, was red chile which some of us, at least, used in place of gravy!<\/p>\n

The uses for red chile are limited only by your imagination.<\/p>\n

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New Mexican Red Chile Sauce<\/h2>\n
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Commercially available red chile pods are categorized by heat level: mild, medium, hot, and extra hot. As with any agricultural product, there is some variability. Look for certified New Mexico grown chile. The town of Hatch in Southern New Mexico is probably the most well know chile-growing region but Chimayo in Northern New Mexico grows some pretty awesome chile, too. If you can\u2019t find New Mexican chile in the markets near you, you can order it on line. I think that using whole pods rather than ground chile (chile molido\u2026NOT to be confused with chili powder!!!) makes for a better texture. See the note at the bottom for a method using ground red chile. Remember, ground New Mexico Red Chile only contains chile pods, nothing else!!! Recipes for Red Chile usually start by specifying a particular number of chile pods. However, many of the pods in any batch of chile are broken. My solution was to weigh the pods, after removing seeds and stems, so that I no longer had to guess about how much broken up chile pod equals one whole pod.<\/div>\n
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Prep Time <\/span>15 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Cook Time <\/span>40 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Total Time <\/span>1 hour<\/span><\/span> hr<\/span> 15 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n
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Servings: <\/span>2<\/span> cups<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ingredients
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