Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Roasted Green Chiles

I love green chiles. They are one of my favorite ingredients. You know what I don't love? Canned green chiles. It's no surprise how I feel about cans. Admittedly, I have a can of green chiles in the cupboard right now. And I cannot get myself to cook with it. If you are anything like me, the reason to not make something from scratch falls into one of the following categories: 

- it's too time consuming
- the can is right there, why do extra work?
- it takes a little confidence to delve into making something from scratch

Luckily, homemade roasted green chiles are not very time consuming (at least not in the hands-on sense) and they are not complicated or difficult to make in the slightest. In fact, you can make the equivalent to a can in less than 45 minutes (with only 10-15 minutes of hands-on time...depending on the number of chiles you are using).

Here's what you'll need:

- 3-4 green chile peppers (makes the equivalent to one four ounce can; need more, add more chiles)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- baking dish

Method: 

(Part 1)
- preheat oven to 425 degrees
- coat each pepper with a little olive oil and place on baking sheet, place in oven
- set timer for 30 minutes 
- turn peppers every 10-15 minutes

When they are done, they'll look like this: 

(Part 2)
- remove peppers to plate and let cool enough to handle 
- if the outside layer isn't already breaking, cut a small slit in each pepper
- remove this layer (sometimes it helps to cut off the stem and a bit off the top)
- once peeled, cut open and scoop out seeds
- chop/dice the peppers

Congratulations...

You now have a delicious ingredient to use that isn't riddled with BPA. :) 

Here's my final product (and, yes, that's a Pioneer Woman cookbook in the background. I owe countless meals to this fabulous lady.) 


Enjoy!