For some reason driving past the hatch chile fields is one of the prominent memories from our original drive out here to Kansas from Arizona. So when I saw the hatch chile peppers in the market display, I was inexplicably driven to buy some.
They sat for a few days in my fridge before I figured out what to do with them. I just had to wrap my head around how to make them useful for our family. I remembered (as a good southwestern girl) that we frequently use those little cans of diced green chiles in things like cornbread, my award-winning white chilli recipe, and our fall favorite–sweet potato and black bean enchiladas. So I decided storing the chiles in the form for those recipes would be most useful for us.
I put the peppers under the broiler to blister the skins, transferred them to a paper bag to steam and settle for an hour, then slipped the skins right off and diced them into little 4-oz jars. I’m just going to freeze these, though I could process them if I had a pressure canner–but I don’t, and we do have enough freezer space.
The whole process was pretty straightforward. Now that I know what I’m doing I may go back for some more chiles and put up a handful more jars for the winter. Of course, now a few hours later I’m realizing that maybe next time I should take precaution to protect my hands–the burning has set in.
Oh well. I really do like those sweet potato black bean enchiladas.
Urban Pioneer Story 
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