Chile Verde

I had a craving for the chile verde pork I used to get at a restaurant in East Nashville called Rosepepper so I thought I’d try to make some. I’m not a strict follower of recipes and it’s not like the restaurant has it’s recipe online so I was going to have to improvise. In my estimation, the meat was pork shoulder chopped up in fairly small pieces and of course it was in a green/verde sauce that was a bit hot. That’s pretty much all I knew. I looked up chile verde online and found chile verde has many fans but people are extremely opinionated about the dish. Therefore, this disclaimer: I don’t warrantee that my version is authentic to any nation, region, or ethnic cooking method. It bears little resemblance to the dish I’ve eaten in the restaurant but was really good anyway.

From what I could gather the important ingredients are chilies, and tomatillos. The chilies ended up being an issue that particular night. Five different groceries and a twenty block walk yielded a couple of green bell peppers, a few jalapenos and some dried red (ancho?) chilies all of which are not great substitutes for really good green chilies. Substitutions are part of cooking though so I went with what I had.

The pork shoulder was easy. I got a four-pounder which I cut in half since I’m only cooking for two. I thankfully had no trouble finding tomatillos either. I had never cooked with them before and was kind of excited about it. They are beautiful little fruit!

This dish isn’t particularly labor-intensive but it is certainly time-intensive so I recommend a lazy weekend day when you feel like staying home and cooking for a while. Color-wise it turned more “rojo” than “verde” due to the red chile but the taste was amazing. Terri turned it into quesadillas and we ate them with white beans and my guacamole salad. There were plenty of leftovers that were just as good later in the week too so it was well worth the effort.

Ingredients:

2-2 1/2 lbs. pork shoulder meat, cut into approximately half inch pieces
2 yellow onions, diced
5 cloves garlic, diced
1 green pepper, diced
2 jalepeno peppers, seeded and finely chopped
1 dried red chile, seeded and finely chopped
1.5 lbs. tomatillos, peeled and cut into quarters
2 tsp. ground cumin
1 Tbs. crushed coriander seed in small amount of water
1 Tbs. dried oregano
4-5 Tbs. cilantro, chopped
1 bay leaf
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 tsp. salt

Crush the coriander seed (if you don’t have a mortar and pestle you can put them in a plastic bag and smash them with a rolling pin or flat sided meat tenderizer or use a coffee grinder) and mix with about a Tbs. of water & set aside to steep

Most pork shoulders that I have bought are 4-5 lbs. so you’ll want to either double the other ingredients or cut the meat in half. I used the boneless half of mine for this recipe. They usually have a piece of fat skin on one side. Remove this and cut into half inch strips for rendering. Cook the strips of fat in a large dutch oven on the stove until they brown and the fat is rendered out of them. In my case, it took around 20 min. over a medium-low flame. Remove the strips of fat/skin, pour off the liquid into a small metal container and set aside.

Cut the pork shoulder into approximately half inch pieces. Put 1-2 Tbs. of the liquid fat back into the same pan and brown the chopped meat with a little salt and black pepper on all sides until it is no longer pink. Remove the meat and set aside, leaving the remaining fat and brown bits in the pan.

Add the onions and garlic and saute until the onions begin to turn clear. Add the green pepper, jalepenos, and dried red chile and saute for another 5-10 minutes. Add the quartered tomatillos and cook, stirring often until they begin to soften. Add the cumin, salt, coriander seed “tea,” the dried oregano, cilantro, bay leaf and chicken stock. Stir and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20-25 min. Remove the bay leaf. I used an immersion blender to lightly blend the sauce at this point. If you don’t have an immersion blender you could let the sauce cool a little and blend it in batches in a regular blender. Or you could easily skip this step altogether since the mixture is going to cook for a long time which will break everything down pretty well anyway.

Add the browned pork to the sauce and simmer over low heat, uncovered for around three hours. It will reduce, concentrating the flavors and the pork will become very tender. If it begins to seem too dry add a little more stock or water.