Pork Green Chili

I made this for the first time and I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I had done some research ahead of time, but after living in the American Southwest for much of the last 6 years (I have a hard time telling myself that Colorado can be a part of that, but we do have Pueblo and Pueblo does have chiles, so….) I knew the relative palette I was going for. I include a little bit of smoked paprika in the recipe, but it’s not from the normal spice section, I had gotten this from the Hispanic part of my local grocer, which had a smoked paprika, chili powder, and crushed pepper combo that I love to put in sauces and salsas because it brings that smoky-heat that I love.

Normally, and for repeatable sake I’ll write it into the recipe, you take pork shoulder, cube it, and then fry it before putting it into the soup. I lucked out and I had gotten a massive (15lb) pork roast from a friend and while getting ready to host our monthly game night, someone had said they’d smoke it for us so we could have smoked pulled pork. Little did I realize just how much 15lbs of smoked pork was! Needless to say, we had a lot (a LOT!) of leftovers. Upon hearing that we had another holiday party coming up this week, what better way to use it than to make chili? And honestly I was wanting to learn and experiment with this recipe for a while now anyway. If you really want to replicate what it looks like in the photo, then you’ll need to cook this down for several hours so that the pork really becomes fork tender and shreds as you stir.

Dice up the pork into bite-sized pieces, and drench in some form of flour if you don’t want to do the later cornstarch method of making a roux. Fry up the pork so that it gets nice and browned before adding it to a large pot or crock pot. Next, dice up the onion and brown it in the pan, using oil and butter to aid in the browning process over a medium-low heat. Check out this tutorial if you need help.

In the large pot or crock pot, add in the chicken stock. I’m being very vague, but if you want pointers on what to use for stocks in your recipes, check out this other recipe here, (eventually I’ll separate out this information into its own tip post and when I do that I’ll update the link) where I go into a little further detail on what to look for at your local supermarket. A good stock or broth has a lot of flavor already in it and can only elevate your own home cooking.

Because I had bought a bag of frozen, pre-cooked and chopped chilis, I added it to the pot here. If you are going a more handmade route or you bought fresh chilis to add, then put them onto a baking sheet in the oven at 450F for about 5-10min per side, until the skin starts to peel or break on its own. You then need to peel the peppers and get rid of the seeds inside and chop them into smaller pieces. A lot of labor for such a simple part, but oh-so-worth it. I’ve also roasted my peppers on the grill for that smoky goodness added into it.

Once the onions and garlic are browned, add them to the pot and stir in salt and pepper to taste. Consider using a bit more salt, because salt is used to bring out flavor in a dish that you wouldn’t expect. There’s a sort of bell-curve when it comes to salting food, it’ll reach a beautiful pinnacle point before becoming actually salty. And it’s usually more salt than you probably think, so add some, let it cook into the soup, and then taste, rinse and repeat until you’ve reached a point where you can taste every delicious morsel of flavor from the dish. At this point I added a bit of garlic powder, which I know I didn’t add to the recipe list, but because garlic is one of those things that you measure with your heart and not any tools, I like my food with a lot of garlic in it.

If you’re putting potatoes into your soup, cube it into bite-sized pieces and you can add them plain into the soup. I had this mixture in the crock pot overnight, this way when I went to put it in containers for my lunch the following day, all of the flavors had come together and made a lot of happiness. Especially if you haven’t already cooked down the pork into fork tenderness, having it in the crock pot on low for 8 hours is a good way to get there. If you find that your soup is runny and thin, take a couple of ladles out into a separate bowl and put in a teaspoon of cornstarch into the bowl and whisk until all of the cornstarch is mixed in. A traditional roux uses melted butter and flour, but I just shortcut and use the liquid from the soup to begin with with cornstarch. Add the cornstarch slurry back into the soup and you’ll see it thicken up quite quickly.

As you serve, feel free to add in shredded cheese. A sharp cheddar will do quite nicely, but I discovered a whole milk mozzarella will also do in a pinch.