For me, one of the best things of this time of year is that it is Hatch Chile Season.

We are a family who tends to love hot food. We rejoice that there are many different chile peppers at our local farmers market right now. However, one we can not get there is the Hatch chile.

One of my brothers lived in New Mexico for many years. When we went to visit him, he introduced us to the New Mexican Hatch chiles. The Hatch chile harvest is at the end of August, and the smell of newly-roasted chiles is fully abloom there this month.

I guess Hatch chiles can’t grow here in North Carolina. However, Harris Teeter has a tradition of featuring them in their store in late August. Mostly, they just sell them for a few weeks and have some special foods to sell, such as Hatch chile wings and Hatch chile mac and cheese. But for a few of their stores, they send an actual Hatch chile roaster for a weekend where you can buy freshly roasted peppers.

This year, we lucked out. One of the lucky Harris Teeters stores with a roaster was close to the school where I teach. So on the designated weekend, I went there after school on Friday and bought 5 pounds of freshly roasted HOT (spicy as well as temperature) Hatch chiles.

It is so much easier if you can buy them already roasted, as shown above at the store where I bought mine.

(I’m not a great food photographer; they looked better in real life.)

However, you still have to peel off the roasted skins. So that is the fun, fun way my son and I spent that Friday night.

BUT HERE IS A KILLER TIP I GOT FROM THE WEBSITE FOOD52:

Save all those peeled off skins and tops and seeds and boil them in the broth you’re going to use for your Hatch Chile dishes, then drain them out of the broth. That transfers the taste from parts you can’t use to the broth and allows you to use fewer chiles in the dish itself, thereby allowing you to make more dishes!

This was particularly useful for me because my first Hatch Chile dish was a Hatch Chile Corn Chowder. This was easy for me, because I’ve made a Chipotle Corn Chowder for many years, so I just substituted Hatch Chiles for the Chipoltes. It was delicious, but definitely a different taste than my Chipotle soup. It was a big hit, because it was gone in two days.

After that, I tried make a Hatch Chile Chili (chile is the pepper, chili is the dish). I couldn’t really find a good recipe for this, so I improvised on this one. From what I read, a hearty bean broth is the backbone of this dish, whereas our Eastern chilis rely a lot on a tomato sauce. I used some wonderful heirloom beans my brother who had lived in NM introduced me to. They were meaty and delicious and wonderful. I did include some of the numerous cherry tomatoes from my farmers market right now, but they were there own things, not part of the sauce. So I guess I ended up with a hybrid NC/NM chili.

With the addition of some time cooking down and cheese and corn chips, it wasn’t that soupy. Again, it was both different and was a hit with my family and got gobbled up in a couple of days.

To be clear, both of these dishes were vegetarian, although not vegan.

I also used a Food 52 recipe to make a Hatch Chile Sauce:c

So we will be adding that various dishes in the next few weeks.

I still have some roasted Hatch Chiles to use up, so stay tuned for more Hatch Chile meals in the near future.