Meet the Hatch Chile “On Fire” at Market Events (Schedule Here!)

August 28, 2018

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(Gerry Furth-Sides) HATCH CHILE is here, and only for six weeks. And they MUST be from Hatch, NM. It is the altitude in this southern New Mexican area that infuses the unique characteristic, cold at night and hot in the daytime. Like mesquite in the 80’s, New Mexican cooks have known about them for years. In fact, the Hatch Chile festival is the biggest in the world, even bigger than the Gilroy garlic festival.

Hatch Chile roasting – schedule below!

What makes them so special is that they taste and feel like the sun’s rays in New Mexico – with a little bit of the “Sangre de Cristo” (Blood of Christ” Mountain light at sundown thrown in.) The heat but tingly, well after you eat them, but not prickly at all. Perfection in both savory and sweet bites. The sweetness comes from roasting the thick skins, which peel right off. The sweet onions grown in Hatch are also sweeter, more delicate and more refined than any other on earth.

HATCH sweet onion& sausage, fennel, Melissa’s champagne grapes, chopped apricot and Roquefort salad.

This six-week season, they are as “hot” as the temperatures of the grills they are roasted in thee days. Thousands of people pile into their SUV’s or at least a car with a trunk big enough to bring 25-pound roasted bags – bags- back for the year, to the annual Labor Day roasting festival in Hatch, New Mexico attracts thousands of people to the roastings – and to the shops which feature everything “Hatch chile”. And Southern California markets are not far behind. Costco even carries the sausage so you know the item has gone mainstream.

Bristol Farms imaginative HATCH CHILE 2018 bites

Robert Schueller of Melissa’s Produce enthuses, the first few years we delivered a couple of cases day, now up to 100 cases. Melissa’s Hatch Chile cookbook remains their most popular seller.

2018 Southern California Hatch Chile Roasting Schedule