Author: steve

One of my favorite things in the world is a big bowl of green chile stew. It’s hearty, hot, and spicy, and, if you make it using my recipe, it’s delicious!

INGREDIENTS

• 1.5 lbs ground turkey, or your favorite meat or meat substitute
• 1 medium onion, diced
• salt to taste
• Around 20 (or more) roasted, peeled, and chopped New Mexico green chiles or a container (or two) of frozen Bueno green chile (see note below)
• 1/2 Tbsp garlic powder
• 32oz chicken broth or vegetable broth
• 4 medium potatoes (I use Butter Golds, if I can find ’em), peeled
• 1 large (27oz) can of pinto beans (I use Bush’s Best)

NOTE: I don’t know the real name for New Mexico green chiles. In New Mexico we just called ’em “green chiles”, so… that might be their real name. They are the green peppers that are anywhere from 4 to 8 inches long (and longer). See the photo below. Anaheim peppers are similar, but I hear they are not as hot. Anyway, when green chiles are allowed to stay on the vine to ripen, they turn red and people often make ristras of the dried peppers to hang as decorations. You can also make an excellent red chile sauce from the dried red chiles.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. If you bought raw green chiles, you should prep them according to the instructions below the recipe in the section called “Roasting Green Chiles”. NOTE: You can use them immediately after roasting, but they will be hot and hard to peel. It’s best to roast them in advance, so you can roast, bag, and freeze them. Then when they are thawed, the skin falls right off.
2. Heat a large pot — I use a 5-Quart Lodge cast iron Dutch oven — and add the ground turkey. Mix it up with a spatula to the size of ground meat chunks you like. I prefer pretty small chunks. If your diet is plant-based, you can also use your favorite vegan meat substitute — I like Impossible Burger for a stew — or just completely skip the meat.
3. About halfway through cooking the ground meat, add the onion and salt to the pot. Stir to mix in the onion.
4. Add the chopped green chiles. Stir to mix them in.
5. When the onions are cooked to translucent, stir in the garlic powder.
6. Add the chicken broth and stir.
7. Cut 3 of the potatoes into fairly large pieces, 8 to 10 per potato. Cut one of the potatoes into small pieces. (The smaller pieces will disintegrate as you cook, thickening the stew.)
8. Stir the potatoes in and bring the stew to a boil
9. Once the stew is boiling, lower the heat, cover, and simmer for 60 to 90 minutes, stirring every 10 or 15 minutes.
10. Stir in the can of pinto beans, including the liquid.
11. Bring the stew back to a boil. Lower heat, cover and simmer for another 30 to 60 minutes.
12. Add more salt or broth, if you think it’s needed. I like my stew to have a hearty, but somewhat soupy, consistency.

Of course, if you like, you can substitute ground pork or beef or chicken or whatever. You can use beef broth or vegetable stock. Make it how you like it, but with this basic recipe, you’ll have a good start on greatness.

If you can’t find fresh roasted green chiles or don’t want to roast your own, Bueno sells frozen containers of green chile at grocery stores around the southern United States. Those are a great substitute that I use without reservation. Do not, however, use the canned green chiles (I know Old El Paso sells them), unless you are desperate.

You may want to serve your green chile stew with some crusty bread or warm, fresh flour tortillas. I don’t, because I try to stay away from too many carbs, but I can vouch that a crusty white bread with a layer of unsalted butter is superb with this dish.

You can also dress the stew with cheese, avocado, fresh tomatoes, a dollop of sour cream, corn tortilla strips, or anything else that sounds good.

Makes 6 to 8 servings.

ROASTING GREEN CHILES

If have been around chile roasters, you know they use a tool that is essentially a mesh  40-gallon steel drum. There is a huge propane fire below the drum. Once the chiles, usually a bushel at a time, are placed into the drum, the roaster turns a handle that spins the drum around, running the chiles over and over and over the fire, until they are nice and black. Then they are put into a large plastic bag to sweat. This makes the removal of the skins very easy, even easier if the chiles are first frozen and thawed.

If you are roasting your chiles for this recipe at home, you can do them on your grill or your gas stovetop burners. (Unless, of course, you want your own tabletop chile roaster — hey, I’ve considered it. The aroma of roasting green chiles just so great!) Grilling is surely easier, because you can do more at once and not have to worry about any mess. The idea is to get the skins blistered and blackened.

Once you have blackened the skins, put the chiles into a plastic bag, allow them to cool a bit, and then freeze them. The freezing is great for prepping the chiles ahead of time, plus it really makes the blistered chile skins come off very easily.

When you are ready to use the chiles, thaw them. Cut off the stems, remove the skin, and remove the seeds. Do not do this under running water, because that will dilute the flavor of the chiles. Just lightly scrape off the seeds and skin on your cutting board. It’s okay if a bit of the skin or a few seeds are left behind. In fact, in the photo above of my stew, that black piece at the top left is a bit of chile skin.

After the chiles are peeled and seeded, chop them up, and they are ready for use in your stew!

I bought this big package of mushrooms, Baby Bellas, at Costco and forgot to use them. Fortunately — this time — I remembered I had them before they went bad, and, since was a cold day here in San Antonio, I decided to make mushroom soup.

I didn’t want cream of mushroom, though. I wanted something less heavy, but with lots of flavor.

As it turned out, I ended up making the World’s Best Mushroom Soup.

The best thing about this soup, I think, is the subtle smoky corny bacon flavor provided by the roux, so don’t skip the bacon grease or corn flour. If you don’t save bacon grease, fry some bacon up and use that grease, then crumble the bacon over the top of the soup when serving. Or just eat it. Bacon is good.

INGREDIENTS

• 24oz Baby Bella mushrooms, stems removed, sliced thick or chopped roughly
• 1 medium sweet potato
• 32oz chicken broth
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 Tbsp garlic powder
• 1 Tbsp onion powder
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 3 Tbsp bacon grease
• 3 Tbsp corn flour (masa)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Peel and nuke the sweet potato for about 3 minutes or so. It doesn’t need to cook through. In fact, you could probably skip this step, but you may want to add a little more time to the simmer to ensure the sweet potato is cooked. Set aside to cool.
2. Heat up a stovetop crock — I use a Lodge cast iron one — on a medium-high burner, and begin to saute the mushrooms in some of the chicken broth. Add the salt almost immediately and stir the mushrooms. This will help bring the liquid out of them. You can add more chicken broth or water, if necessary, just to make sure the pan doesn’t dry out, but the idea is to shrink the mushrooms a bit and reduce the liquid to intensify the flavor of the broth they are creating.
3. Once the mushrooms are pretty much reduced, maybe 10 minutes, add the chicken broth, garlic powder, onion powder, and black pepper to the pot. Stir.
4. Cut the sweet potato into 1/2- to 3/4-inch chunks and add it to the soup.
5. Bring the soup to a boil. Once it’s boiling, reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, for an hour.
6. While the soup is simmering, add the bacon grease to a small pot, on medium heat. When the grease is liquid, add the corn flour. Stir constantly, until thick, creating a roux. Don’t burn the roux! If it burns, toss it out and start again. This is not a traditional flour and butter roux, so you don’t need to brown it too much, but you should be able to smell a popcorn-y bacon aroma. This should take 5 to 10 minutes. Set the roux, still in the pot, aside.
7. After the soup has been simmering for an hour, covered, add the roux a  bit at a time, stirring to incorporate each bit before adding more. This will thicken the soup while adding more flavor.
8. Cover and simmer for another 15 minutes.
9. Serve immediately.

Makes 2 large or 4 medium servings.

NUTRITION PER LARGE SERVING

• Calories: 338
• Fat: 21 g
• Protein: 7 g
• Carbs: 31 g (including Fiber: 4.5 g)

This is one tasty soup for a cold day. You may want to serve it with some crusty bread. I don’t, but you may. If you do serve crusty bread, at least slather it with butter to try to balance out the fat-carb ratio.

I suppose you could use a regular potato instead of a sweet potato, but I like the flavor of the sweet potato.

Enjoy!