Chili Relleno Pancakes - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes.com with chili rianno pancake that's right chili rinos are one of my all-time favorite foods but done using the traditional method they are a little bit of a pain in the kulo to make and what follows is my attempt to take all those exact same ingredients and rearrange them into something that gives us almost the exact same final product but in a more user-friendly way and for a first attempt i could not have been happier with how this came out so with that let's go ahead and get started with the star of the show the poblano chili pepper which besides being quite beautiful are absolutely delicious and sort of like a green bell pepper but with a more complex intense flavor and definitely a little more heat all right i wouldn't say these are spicy but they're not completely mild either and what we're going to do first is place these over an open flame so we can char the entire surface which most people think we do so we can remove the skin which is definitely true but we're also and just as importantly cooking the pepper as well so just because that skin blackens doesn't mean we're necessarily done and we really do want to fire roast these until the peppers begin to get soft okay not super soft but there definitely should be some give when you squeeze in with your tongs and if you don't have gas burners you can also use a blow torch or your grill or as i'll explain later you can just skip this entire step and just slice and saute the peppers and while that will work practically what you're going to be missing out on is that beautiful subtle smoky flavor which personally i think is one of the keys and then what we'll do once those are fully charred and feeling perfect is lay those on top of some paper towels and then roll them up and then we'll roll and wrap everything up nice and tightly in a kitchen towel at which point we'll leave those peppers to steam in their own steaminess for at least about 15 or 20 minutes or until we're ready to work with them and then what we'll do once that's been accomplished is move on to make our sauce which for me is going to start with a saucepan set over medium-high heat into which we've added a little bit of olive oil and we'll go ahead and toss in some diced onion as well as some minced garlic and of course the customary very large pinch of salt and what we'll do is cook that stirring for a few minutes or until our onions start to turn translucent and maybe even begin to take out a little bit of golden color and then once that's been accomplished we'll go ahead and add our tomato product which for me is going to be some marinara although traditionally this is usually made with fresh tomatoes but personally i do prefer the sauce and then we will also add a little bit of chicken broth which we can use to wash out our tomato measuring cup and then we'll go ahead and season this up with some chili powder okay a little bit or a lot depending on your taste we will also add some dry oregano some freshly ground black pepper some salt of course as well as the equally predictable few shakes of cayenne and then we'll finish up with a little bit of ground cumin and then last but not least a little touch of cinnamon and once everything's in there we'll give it a stir and simply wait for it to come up to a simmer and i really should stress at this point that this is my version of chili reno sauce and in no way am i saying this is the authentic version which i don't think is even a thing all right just like italians and spaghetti sauce there are as many recipes as there are families so this is going to be up to you to adapt as you see fit i mean you are after all the hefe of your sauce and in case you've never worked in a restaurant that does mean boss of your sauce and that's it once we get that simmer in we'll simply lower our heat to medium-low at which point we'll simmer that gently stirring occasionally for at least 30 minutes and above and beyond adjusting the seasoning feel free to add some more broth if you don't want your sauce quite as thick as i like mine again this is all just personal preference and i've had versions of this that were super thick whereas other versions were as thin as tomato juice so basically with this kind of thing there's the way you do it and the wrong way and that's it once our sauce is simmered long enough we'll go ahead and give it a taste and adjust those seasonings if need be and assuming we like it we will simply reserve it until needed and obviously if we're making this ahead we'll want to reheat it before we use it and now that that's that we can go back and unwrap our peppers which no do not look very good at this point but they're going to look a whole lot better once we scrape off this burnt skin which i like to do with the edge of a knife and then besides the skin we'll also have to remove the seeds and since we're going to slice everything up for this method in hindsight i could have just torn all this open and cut away the stem and seedpod but i think what happened was muscle memory took over since this is how you prep them for the real deal where the skin and the seeds in the seed pod are removed while leaving the pepper hole so it can be stuffed with cheese and then battered and fried so what i'm trying to say is i probably could have done this step a lot faster and speaking of faster yes we could have just taken this pepper to the sink and rinsed off all that burnt skin and then the seeds from the inside but they say if this is under running water too long you end up losing some of that beautiful subtle smoky flavor from the surface so i try to do as much as i can with the knife and then i'll just give the inside a little bit of a rinse to get rid of those loose seeds while trying to avoid having the water run too much on the outside which at this point is exactly where i went and what i did although i didn't film it because who wants to watch someone rinse out seeds from the inside of a pepper but bottom line these peppers need to be skinned and seeded at which point i'm going to go ahead and slice these into strips and sure if you have absolutely no way to roast the peppers you could if you want to just cut them in half and remove the seeds and then cut them into strips like this and give them a quick saute and a little bit of olive oil just until they start to soften and my plan here was to use one pepper per portion although that's really going to depend on the size of your peppers of course and then besides the green chili we're also going to need to cube up some cheese which in my case is going to be some monterey jack but i think a mild white cheddar would also work or you could even do half and half which is very nice all right you decide i mean you are after all the jesus of your cheeses and that's it once that's set we can move on to the last component which would be a very very simple egg batter and for that we will crack one whole egg into a bowl but with the second egg we're actually going to separate it with the white going into a separate bowl and then the yolk going into the bowl with the whole egg and then once those have been separated we'll toss a big pinch of salt into the bowl with the whole egg and yolk at which point we will whisk that enthusiastically for a few minutes until we have a nice light foamy mixture which hopefully looks a little something like this at which point we're going to whisk in a couple tablespoons of flour in a few additions okay you could probably just dump it all in and whisk it but i decided to do mine semi-gradually but either way once that flour's been mixed in we will set that aside and we'll add a pinch of salt to our white and then we'll take a clean whisk and we will whip our egg white into soft peaks and i know you'd rather do stiff peaks but don't alright for this batter we want our egg whites to be relatively supple and soft and certainly not super stiff and dry and grainy so i only like to whisk mine to this point and that's it we'll go ahead and grab a spatula and we'll transfer our yolk mixture into our whites and then fold it together until it's just combined and please do not get too obsessed about deflating the egg whites all right we definitely want to use a light touch and we don't want to deflate them intentionally since that would be weird but at the same time we don't have to be ultra careful like if we were making a souffle since all we're really making here is kind of a foamy batter so we'll just go ahead and fold and stir that together semi-carefully basically just until those egg whites disappear and when we're done if everything's gone according to plan our batter should look like this and as you can see it does and if it does we can head to the stove where we have a non-stick pan with a little bit of olive oil in it set over medium heat and what we'll do is go ahead and spoon in our batter into any shape we want and i decided since these are supposed to be chili rellenos i would try to do sort of a pepper shape and this would be the perfect time to tell you that one egg will make enough batter for one chili rino pancake so what you saw me mix up was enough or two and then what we'll do once our bottom layer of batter has been placed down is go ahead and apply some of our sliced roasted poblano and since this was an experiment i wasn't exactly sure how much i was going to be able to fit in these but i did pretty much get one entire pepper in this portion but not all at once i went ahead and grabbed my cheese and i applied as much of that as i thought i could get away with followed by the rest of my peppers and because i was feeling lucky even more cheese and while we do have to do a little bit of slicing and dyson for this method i still think it's easier than the classic technique and actually maybe easier is not the best word since it's probably about the same amount of work so instead i'll just say i think this method is easier to execute perfectly plus by doing them this way we can use way way less oil and i think there's a lot less mess but anyway once i had placed over my peppers and then cheese and then peppers and then cheese i went ahead and covered it with the top layer of batter trying my best to retain the shape and now get it everywhere and right here you see me testing if you can do a little fine-tuning with the spatula which you sort of kind of can and that's it what we'll do at this point is pop on a lid and we will cook this for about three or four minutes before we attempt to flip it over and as i did i was really hoping that surface was going to be perfect would like no weirdness or cracks but that was not the case and as you can see i did get a crack which was a little bit wack and that was probably caused by flipping it a little bit too early so we should probably give that first side a little longer but anyway i tried to fix it as best i could and also tried to tidy up the edges a little bit and then i tossed the cover back on for a few more minutes to cook the other side and you could probably do this without the cover but that's going to help keep some of that heat and steam in to maybe cook that batter a little faster and that's it i uncovered it and flipped it over to see how we did on the other side which i thought looked very cool with some of those cubes of cheese browning up nicely and i was thinking of presenting this side up and probably should have but i am nothing if not stubborn so i flipped it back over to the original top side which i thought looked more like a chili rianno and then once i was pretty sure my cheese inside was nice and melty and my batter was cooked through i went ahead and placed that on a generous serving of our sauce and then proceeded to garnish it with absolutely nothing all right i guess if you wanted to you could sprinkle on some chopped cilantro but personally i think less is more here and i believe when you bite in you'll understand so i grabbed a fork and went in for a taste and i was absolutely thrilled with how this came out i mean it tasted and felt exactly like a chili rieno which is not surprising since we used the exact same ingredients but with a real chili rieno the cheese is inside the pepper and not touching the batter so my big fear was that the texture was going to be all off but you know what it really wasn't and then i also had the same fear about slicing up the pepper instead of leaving it in larger pieces but that was not a problem either and not only did it taste exactly the same but i think it's easier to eat since we don't have to worry about trying to eat around that seed pod and stem not to mention sometimes the batter can slide off the pepper so like i said i really thought this worked very very well and as far as the proportions between the pepper and the cheese and the batter i thought they were virtually identical to the traditional method and believe me not to brag but i've eaten a lot of chili rellenos in my day whoops see even after eating as many as i have i'm still working on my technique and by the way if you want to serve this wet as they say and ladle the sauce over the top that is certainly your prerogative and that's how a lot of people do enjoy them but i am a sauce underneath guy from way back speaking of which i decided right here i needed to lay it along a little more but anyway that's it what i'm calling chili rieno pancake because i couldn't think of a better name so if you think of something better please pass it along but no matter what we call these if you love actual chili rainos as much as me i really do hope you give these a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 286,678

Rating: 4.9456549 out of 5

Keywords: Chili, Relleno, Pancake, recipe, Mexican, breakfast, brunch, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking

Id: vZQDBMMWrSA

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/nointerestsbutsleep]

I was like did he say culo? Yup, he said culo!

[u/what_times_lunch]

I love chile rellenos. I love chef John. I don’t like chef john’s version of chile rellenos.