Chile/Salsa Verde

While consolidating from two to one freezer - yep, no need for two without the BBQ business - I discovered a piece of Hawaiian pork roast from our blogger party in 2013.  We had been wanting to make green chile so I went in search of a Chile Verde recipe and found one that sounded good at food.com and matched the ingredients we had on hand, or at least thought we did.  You can click on the link to check out the original recipe but below is what we made.

We decided we wanted to have some salsa verde on hand so we made an entire recipe of the sauce then added some to the diced pork to make the chile verde.  In the freezer, I had discovered what I believed was a bag of roasted chiles but they turned out to be roasted red sweet peppers.  So we ended up using them for in place of the yellow bell pepper and we used canned chiles for that part - I also grilled the tomatillos to char and soften them a little.  We started with only three quarts of chicken broth knowing we could add more as needed.

Salsa Verde - adapted from food.com

Ingredients

• 3 quarts chicken broth - homemade
• 3 lbs fresh tomatillos, husks removed and grilled to char and soften, remove to a bowl
• 2 large yellow onions
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon sea salt
• fresh ground pepper, to taste
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 can with 5 whole chiles and one small canned diced green chiles, with liquid
• 2 fresh jalapeno peppers, chopped with seeds
• 2 roasted red peppers from the freezer
• 1 cup cilantro leaf, coarsely chopped

• Directions

  1. In a large stock pot over high heat bring the chicken broth to a simmer and add the onion, garlic, peppers, cumin, S&P.  Cook until veggies are soft - about 30 minutes.
  2. While this is cooking, grill the tomatillos until charred a little and softened, remove to a bowl
  3. Add the tomatillos with bowl liquid, canned chilles with liquid, and cilantro to the blender and puree.
  4. Empty blender and puree the vegetables and broth from the pan.
  5. Add everything back to the pot, adjust seasonings and thickness (add more broth or cook down to get desired).  We liked it as it was and pronounced it ready to eat.

The sauce turned out to be very good but some of the meat in the chile verde tasted a little old - so no post about it.  While we used canned chiles, I believe roasting the tomatillos and using the roasted red peppers got plenty of that flavor into the mix.  And while the chile verde was just okay, what was very good were the burritos Bev made for breakfast from the salsa verde.  The first one was stuffed with sausage, eggs, and refried beans and the one below with smoked chicken, eggs, and hash browns.  I hadn't decided if I was going to post about the salsa until this burrito got delivered to me.

It was delicious and of course the star was the salsa verde - the red peppers took away from the brighter green color.  Since this batch turned out so good, I can imagine how good it will be when we have some good roasted Hatch chiles - hopefully picked up when we visit CO this year.  The rest of this salsa batch will go into the freezer for the next time we need a verde fix.

Thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Larry

6/12/15 meal date