LOCAL

A toast to the roast: New Mexico green chile at area groceries

Adrian Hedden
Las Cruces Sun-News
Gabe Ramez roasts green chile for a customer at Lowe's Fiesta Foods on Main Street on Thursday, Aug. 11, 2022. Roasting is available from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at many groceries across the state.

The pungent but unmistakable odor of New Mexico’s most iconic vegetable is wafting from groceries stores across the state this week. It reminds New Mexicans of their pasts, gathering with family over traditional dishes like enchiladas or stew.

Green chiles are an icon in the state, and the summer months see stores throughout New Mexico roasting the peppers for weeks.

The peppers are sold in large 20-pound crates and incorporated into specialty, seasonal items for sale at stores.

From southwest New Mexico’s Hatch Valley, the peppers are also shipped throughout the state, nation and world, igniting debate on their superiority to the Pueblo green chile of Colorado.

This year’s harvest, which began in July and August could continue until November, said Preston Mitchell, owner of the Hatch Chile Store and 4-A Packing in the Hatch valley.

He estimated his business would harvest about 850 tons of chile this year, an increase and a better quality than last year Mitchell attributed to a dryer summer producing a better pepper.

Heavy rainfall a summer ago imperiled the crop, leaving much of it impacted by bacteria or mold, he said.

“Last year, we had a lot of quality issues with all the rains we had,” Mitchell said. “It really bit into not only the total acres, but also the quality. You get a lot of diseases out there when you have a lot of water. You get a lot of bacterial growth. It’s just a mess.”

In 2021, the New Mexico Department of Agriculture reported a 22% drop in green chile harvested from the year before, from 65,000 tons in 2020 to 51,000 tons last year.

Luna County led the state in 2021, records show, as it did in 2020 and 2019, with 20,200 tons harvested, followed by Doña Ana at 16,300 tons and Sierra County at 9,125 tons.

Chris Franzoy, owner of Young Guns Hatch Chile Factory, which supplies the pepper to Albertsons, said he was confident that by the end of the season, 2022 will prove a more successful harvest.

He said he expected to produce about 30 million pounds of green chile this year, a growth Franzoy estimated was about 20 percent more than last year.

“The crop has performed very well, and we’ll continue to harvest as long as mother nature allows,” he said. “As long as we have good weather, we’ll be able to meet consumer demand.”

Mitchell said the pepper was emblematic of New Mexico, proven by orders to ship it as far away as Japan or Australia to people who once tasted Hatch green chile and cannot get their fix from anything else.

“It sort of is the lifeblood of our state and is tied to our identity,” he said. “I can’t think of another product where people move away from New Mexico, and still spend hundreds of dollars to have it shipped to them.

“That’s big part of our business.”

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Adrian Hedden can be reached at 575-628-5516, achedden@currentargus.com or @AdrianHedden on Twitter.