nom nom nom… Erin’s Hatch Green Chile Burros

Our friend Erin makes these amazing Santa Fe-style Hatch Green Chile Burros. We happily offer our kitchen whenever she needs to make a big batch. The fee is however many burros we can scrounge off her.

She cooks like we do, mostly by feel. So here is a rough outline of the recipe. See the pics below to get general proportions. You can adjust to taste over time.

Acquire the following

• very large, real Mexican flour tortillas (even Mission will do)
• couple pounds of ground chuck or sirloin beef
• Hatch green chiles (these are fire-roasted New Mexican chiles – you can use a fresh-frozen brand like Bueno)
• dried Mexican Oregano (Tampico or similar authentic brand – comes in largish bags, see pics below)
• Red Chile powder (Tampico or similar authentic brand)
• Cumin powder (Tampico or similar authentic brand)
• fresh garlic, minced
• granulated garlic
• Rotel (canned tomato/chile mix)
• El Pato (canned Mexican tomato sauce)
• large russet potatoes, skin-on and cubed
• salt & pepper
• Jack Cheese (orange and white blended one is best)

For white trash queso

• Velveeta or other plastic yellow cheese-like susbstance, or Asadero Mexican white cheese
• can of Rotel
• milk or cream

Simply melt this shit together in a sauté pan and add milk or cream to thin to desired consistency.

Execute the following

1. Invite Erin over, or learn this recipe.
2. Add the beef to very large sauté pan and sprinkle dried ingredients (oregano, cumin, chile and granulated garlic) on top. Mix and cook beef and spices down together.
3. Once the beef is browned, add the wet ingredients (fresh garlic, chiles, rotel/tomatoes and potatoes). Simmer until blended, about 10 minutes. Don’t use too much heat. Take your time. Drink a lot.
4. Add some El Pato or more Rotel for moisture if it seems like the potatoes are sucking everything up and there isn’t much moisture left.
5. Cook until potatoes are tender, but not mushy. Add moisture as needed. You can use a little beef broth if you’re out of tomato sauce. This may take 30-45 minutes depending on batch size/moisture/potato dice size.
6. Hand baby to Justin, drink more and continue to watch Erin.
7. In another very large pan (or same one cleaned up after transferring mixture to a bowl) over med-low heat, lay out a large tortilla, spoon on a big clump of mixture and distribute evenly across bottom half of tortilla, but leave room around the edge. Add a couple hunks of the block cheese of choice.
8. One step-at-a-time, roll the burro on itself and push to top of pan when fully rolled. You are sealing the burro with moisture and heat as you roll. You will burn your fingertips if you’re doing it right.

Now you have a complete meal in a pocket. Serve with any Mexican salsa or the queso described above. Then slowly die.

To save them, roll first in parchment or wax paper, then foil. If you step any of them up with extra hot chiles, mark foil appropriately. They reheat in a microwave, in the wax paper (not the foil, dumass), in about 1-2 minutes. YMMV.

Note: these get better each day they sit in the fridge until about Day 6 when they turn to poison.

How things should look at each stage:

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