Cooking Challenge!

I'm on a mission to become the next Top Chef! So I'm expanding my repertoire to something a bit more adventurous! Making a Mexican comfort food classic: Chile Rellenos! For those who cannot speak Spanish, literally translated it is called Stuffed Peppers. And good news! I remembered to take pictures!!... Mostly... These are a bit more complicated, but oh so delicious, not too spicy, but full of flavor!

The best chiles are Anaheim or Pasilla chiles. I'm partial to Pasilla chiles because they are fatter and easier to stuff, but either can work. I was a bad blogger and forgot to take pictures of these steps. I'm sorry! 😭 All you have to do is toast the chile. Gas stove works best, but electric stove works fine, and if it is a conduction stove? Use a pan. Now we are going to toast the chile as evenly as possible, this makes the chile soft and makes the skin easier to peel. You will here a lot of popping sounds, this is normal, this is the skin blistering.

After all the chile is evenly roasted and slightly soft, place it in a bowl and cover it for roughly 20-30 minutes to sweat. Then rinse and the skin should peel off fairly easily. The chile will usually break open in one area, gently ease this opening from the curve at the stem to the point of the tail. This will reveal the inside and all the seeds and membranes. Like this!

Here we have room to play. A common misconception is that the seeds are the spicy part, but in reality it's the membranes!
After it's all clean inside it should look like this. I prefer mine a bit spicer, hence the membranes.

Now we work on the filling! Filling can be anything! Traditional is all cheese, but today I'm added some turkey slices! You can get creative, Thanksgiving turkey leftovers, ground meat, BACON 😍😍😍!
Afterwards, just
place inside the chile like so!

Each family always has a unique way of closing the chiles, my family uses toothpicks, but remember, these are NOT edible.
The chiles are then dredged in flour or cornstarch.

This is the hardest part, labor wise, making the egg coating. The eggs need to be whipped, old fashioned way is a fork, I use a mixer. 🤷🏻‍♀️ The egg is whipped until stiff peaks form, then add the egg yolk and mix until combined. As so.

The fun part! Covering the chile in the egg! Simply place the chile in the egg and scoop the egg onto the chile using a spoon (very clean!) or your hands, quite messy (don't recommend, but it's fun!). Then warm up the pan and use whatever you like to cook with oil/butter/lard. I like to use butter!

Two ways to flip the chile

1. Using the tail. Problem is some chiles have short or no tails.
2. Using a spatula. Just be sure the egg is fully cooked before and be gentle. Don't rip the egg of. If you do, two things. Add more egg, or leave it and let it be avant garde. 😁

It should look somewhat like this.
If you have too much egg left over, cook it, it's the softest fluffiest egg you will ever taste.

I cooked some rice, standard white rice, but added some basil, parsley, pepper, salt and a hint of oregano. Some beans from a local restaurant, yes this future top Chef occasionally gets take out. For shame! 😱😔

Here is the finished result!

I hope you enjoyed this post! Please let me know if you tried it and what the result was. I can tell you that mine came out delicious. Until next time!

-A Girl