Green Chile Chicken Stew

This is not a good recipe for GCCS. New Mexicans use little to no cumin in our cooking and even less cilantro. Onion, carrots, potatoes diced. Saute w/a little s&p for ten min, add chopped garlic and green chillies. Toss in 2tbs flour, cook a few minutes and add homemade chicken stock. Let it come to a boil them turn down. Finish w/ a little cream and shredded roasted chicken breast. S&p to taste. Serve with shredded cheddar, corn & flour tortillas. My grandma's recipe 505 till I die 😂

This raised as New Mexican says, no to cilantro. I like cilantro, but it does not go with this dish. And, surely NYT foodie writer, you know that many many grocery stores across the US host traveling Hatch roasters? You can buy it fresh by the case and roasted out front. It’s pretty dang legit. I get a case each year in Virgina and seal-a-meal a few pods per package, freeze. Very economical.

New Mexicans in the know buy chile from Lemitar...more flavorful and grown more organically. We make our green chile chicken stew with chicken breasts which we shred with two forks after they've cooked in the broth. Carrots? Cilantro? Dredging in flour? Cornstarch? No way. Saute onions, add potatoes, a can of diced tomatoes, chile, chicken stock, a couple of chicken breasts, S and P and a little garlic, simmer until breasts are cooked, shred and put back in pot and simmer. Easy!

A couple notes from a Santa Fean: Hatch chile is best, but if you can't find them you can get away with widely available Anaheim chiles, roasted on a grill until they've got some black spots. Wrap them up hot to steam - they'll be easier to peel. Buy the mildest Hatch available, then bump up the heat in finished recipes with cayenne to taste.

Two things, already mentioned implicitly, here explicitly. First, green chile MUST be peeled before eating because the skin is much thicker and tougher than bell pepper skin and very unpleasant to eat. And to peel it, you roast it (which adds to the flavor). Second, cilantro NO! Approximately 10% of the population experiences cilantro as tasting like soap. People who have a shared group of olfactory-receptor genes, called OR6A2, pick up on the smell of aldehydes present in cilantro and soap.

I don't agree that the best chiles are grown in Hatch. Equally good green chiles are grown all over the lower 2/3 of the state. Hatch has the quantity and the marketing budget- that doesn't make their produce any better. It doesn't get any better than chile from Big Jim's in Corrales! Drives me crazy that people living in NM don't seem to understand that Hatch is a geographical location, not a type of chile. I get people in other parts of the country thinking so, because Hatch exports so much.

Worked 15 years in Produce. The best Anaheim chili (or for that matter any produce item) is the one that arrives at your market the freshest. Regardless of where grown. And if you can't find a really fresh Anaheim, there is a frozen pre-roasted product that comes in plastic tubs that is quite good in cooked applications.

There is no need to use large potatoes, peel and cube them. Use very small round potatoes with red, blue, or yellow skins; add them whole and do not peel them. Between 8 and 10 for this recipe. The color is attractive, the skins are tasty, and no prep work at all is involved.

New Mexico chilies, like most chili varieties, vary greatly in heat. (Amal Naj's book, "Chilies", notes that heat(=capsacin content) increases in dry, hot weather and with water deprivation (the pods on plants closest to irrigation channels are mildest). At my local grocery, they were sorted into mild/hot/extra hot- The first were like regular green peppers; the last were hotter than serranos. Before using, slice each one open and sniff.(Capsaicin, concentrated in seeds is mildly volatile.)

there is no need to dredge the chicken thighs in flour. Just salt n' pepa them and proceed. Also, no need for cornstarch - simply smash some of the potatoes against the side of the dutch oven towards the end. also I about doubled the green chile amount. It was great.

Chiles traveled from New Mexico to California with colonists in the late 1700s. When the Germans showed up, they bred the heat out of the ones in CA, and called them Anaheims. Hatch chiles are a different species and truly New Mexican. They have heat. If you don't like spicy hot chile, Anaheims would be a good substitute. And only the tiniest touch of cumin (perhaps) and no cilantro goes in GCCS in SF cooking.

I recommend waiting until 5-10 minutes before serving to add the green chile. That way the flesh and the flavor of the roasted chile stays in tact and doesn’t just get boiled away during cooking.

Why not thicken with masa (if necessary), rather than cornstarch? Tastes way better.

Super yummy and easy to make. I get so tired of the holier than thou comments about how a dish should only be made one way. Recipes are not immutable. The traditional way is not necessarily the best, or maybe the author is going for a different flavor profile. In the accompanying article he notes that he has modified to suit his tastes.

I think I'll try this recipe as written. I'm getting kind of cranky about demanded alterations to recipes that someone has polished enough to publish.