Colorado-style Green Chile

This is a recipe for Colorado-style (as opposed to New Mexico-style) Green Chile. Or Chli. The choice of spelling seems to be random. Anyway, this is a huge deal in Denver and common across Colorado generally, but outside the Southwest is basically unheard-of.

Source Recipe

https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/colorado-green-chili
This is the recipe I started from. It's written by a professional so you should probably read it first. I've had to adjust it quite a bit though, mostly due to wildly incorrect cooking times.
 

Equipment

• Cast iron dutch oven, with lid, 5 quarts or larger, oven-safe to at least 325degF. The lid must fit snugly and not have a vent hole.
• Oven
• Food processor
• Bowls and spoons and such, nothing special

Ingredients

• 3 pounds (+/- to taste) pork shoulder, cut into small cubes
• Chiles (see below!), approximately 1 pound processed weight
• 1 quart chicken broth or stock
• 1 large onion (white! NOT yellow!!), diced (NB: the source recipe says 2, but that will make the final product far too sweet. We want chiles and pork, not onion, to be the dominant flavors.)
• 8+ cloves fresh garlic, finely minced
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 can (14oz) diced tomatoes
• ¼ cup all-purpose flour, +/- depending on textural preference and how much pork fat you end up with
• Salt, to taste, but expect to use at least 3 tablespoons
• 1 Lime, juiced. Additional lime juice, or lime wedges for serving, to taste
• Patience.

On Chiles…

If you can buy chiles directly from a roaster, do so. They'll be delivered to you in a sack, let them steam for about an hour, then start peeling and seeding. Wear gloves. This is miserable work that will pay off later. Divide your processed chiles into portions (1lb fits nicely in a quart freezer bag) and freeze.

If fresh roasted chiles are not available in your area, or you have run out and it is not the right season, there are three alternatives:

1. Purchase processed chiles, either locally (probably CO/NM only) or online. This is expensive but you will get the good stuff, and it will be much less work.
2. Purchase canned chiles. The quality is lower, but generally acceptable, the price is lower, and the convenience is nice. You will not generally have much choice of heat levels (most canned chiles are Mild) but this can be fixed.
1. At least in Colorado, Costco sells small (4oz?) cans of roasted chiles in flats of 12. I supplement proper roasted chiles with these, but you can use them exclusively if it's what you can get.
3. Purchase fresh Anaheim chiles and roast them yourself.
1. See the instructions in the source recipe for the general idea, but I never found things to work out the way they said.
2. If you go this route, I recommend roasting on a gas (or even charcoal) grill instead of under an oven broiler. Use maximum heat, and turn the chiles when one side gets sufficiently blackened.
3. After roasting, let the chiles steam in a sealed container or covered with plastic wrap, then process.
4. It's a good idea to do this whole operation the day before, rather than try to do it while the meat is cooking as in the source recipe. That way lies madness.

What kind of chiles should you get? Hatch or Pueblo if available, otherwise Anaheim as above. Mild chiles are a good choice if you didn't grow up eating green chile, or are generally not a spicy food person. Medium chiles are preferred if you can handle it. Hot chiles will generally produce an unpleasant end product unless you are a capsaicin addict, and should only be used in a blend with milder chiles. Note that the actual spiciness of "Mild", "Medium", etc. chiles will vary season-to-season.

The source recipe suggests adding a few jalapenos in addition to the more substantial chiles. I no longer do this, mostly to simplify the recipe, but it adds a nice flavor and is an easy way to add a little heat. Resist the temptation to add a habanero unless you are making a restaurant-sized batch. Habanero powder, however, is a great way to add heat without changing the flavor or texture. A little goes a long way!

Procedure

Definitely read this all the way through before starting, it's a bit scattered.

The Meat

1. Cut the pork into small cubes, <1" recommended, but do as you like. If the pork is extremely fatty, you may trim it and discard some of the fat, but a significant amount of fat is desirable. "Not fatty enough" is a more common problem.
   
2. Season the cubed pork with salt and a little black pepper (advanced: add other seasonings as desired). Let sit for 30+ minutes.
3. Place the pork in your dutch oven and cook on medium heat, covered, for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Uncover, and raise the heat to medium-high. Stir often, and cook for an additional 40+ minutes(!).
1. (While this is going on, see the next section.)
2. The goal is to cook off all the water, and for the pork to brown in its own fat.
3. You'll know you're done when most of the pork pieces are browned on all sides. Stop if they start to look excessively crispy, like bacon.
5. Remove the pork from the pot with a slotted spoon and set aside. There should be a glorious pool of pork fat left in the pot. Placing the pork cubes in a strainer will enable you to recover even more fat.

The Vegetables

1. Dice the onion and set aside.
2. Chop half of your chiles into roughly ¼" pieces and set aside.
3. Other half of the chiles goes in the food processor, along with approximately ¼ of the diced onion.
1. Pulse to your desired texture. I recommend stopping short of a full puree.
2. This is one of the main ways to influence texture. Experiment!
4. Set aside the processed chile/onion slurry in a bowl
5. Add the can of diced tomatoes to the food processor and pulse to desired texture. This can be comparable to the chile/onion mixture, or chunkier, or smoother… totally up to you.

The Aromatics / Roux

1. Add the diced onion to the pool of pork fat, and reduce heat to medium
2. (If your pork was on the lean side and you ended up with insufficient fat to cook the onions in, add some vegetable oil... or bacon grease)
3. Stir continuously
4. The source recipe says the onions will be "lightly browned" in 5-7 minutes, which is absurd. A good target time is 15 minutes, though feel free to go longer if you prefer more browning.
5. Add the flour and keep stirring. This is a major determinant of final texture. There is a substantial difference between ¼ cup and ½ cup in terms of the final result (more = thicker, of course). More flour will require more fat. Experiment!
6. Cook the flour/onion/fat mixture for around 5 minutes. Roux rules apply: the longer it cooks the darker it will get, which contributes more flavor but less thickening.
7. Add the garlic and cumin and continue stirring for another 2 minutes or until the aroma just drives you mad
8. (All the cooking times in this section can be varied to suit your tastes)

Into The Oven

1. Have your oven preheated to 325degF, with a rack set low in the oven so there's clearance for your pot
2. To the onion/fat/flour/garlic/cumin mixture, add (in any order):
   
1. the broth or stock
2. the (semi-)pureed chile/onion mixture
3. the (processed) diced tomatoes
4. the chopped chiles
5. the pork
3. Stir, cover, into the oven for 90 minutes (longer cook times are ok and will further tenderize the pork)

Serving

• When the cooked chile comes out of the oven, add the juice of 1 lime (adjust to taste) and stir thoroughly
• Taste and adjust salt. It's not unusual for 2+ tablespoons of salt to be needed at this point, depending on how much the meat was salted and the salt content of your broth or stock.
• Serve with rice, tortillas, lime wedges, that kind of thing
• Top a burger with it, or smother fried eggs, be creative! In Denver we put it on everything

Tips

In practice these steps are not performed linearly. The meat takes so long to brown, I use that time to do the "Vegetables" steps so those things are ready. This is also a good time to peel and mince the garlic.

The bottom of your pot will start looking pretty brown and possibly a little burnt by the time the pork is finished browning. Don't worry, the time in the oven will loosen that up and it will contribute to the overall flavor.

My dutch oven is 6.5 quarts which is just barely enough for a double recipe. YMMV.

Restaurant-style green chile tends to be much less meaty than this recipe, but everyone in my family prefers it this way. It's unquestionably more satisfying to eat on its own with a high meat content, whereas restaurants tend to use it more as a sauce. Using less meat, or more broth/stock, are easy and safe tweaks to this recipe.