Chili Verde Recipe - Easy Pork & Tomatillo Stew - How to Make Green Chili

love this is chef john from food whooshes calm with chili verde that's right not only is this delicious green chile one of the best pork stews ever this was also one of the first recipes i ever learned and that was in a Mexican restaurant I worked at during culinary school but anyway enough of the history lesson I'm sure eventually you'll read all about that in my best-selling memoirs slash cookbook slash self-help guide but in the meantime let me just go ahead and show you how to put this simple and delicious recipe together so for step 1 we're going to brown a couple pounds of pork shoulder in some vegetable oil over high heat and obviously that's boneless pork shoulder also known as in certain circles as pork butts and as you can see we've cut that into some regularly sized cubes somewhere between one and two inches is probably ideal and once we get that meat in there what we're going to do is let it sear without touching it for about four or five minutes so at least we get some decent browning on one side because to be quite honest we are crowding this pan if we really wanted a thorough browning we would be doing this in batches but I'm not I'm going to do all two pounds at once which is fine because the chef I learned this from didn't brown the meat at all there everything was just thrown into pot and stood until tender so we will let that first side seer for about four or five minutes on high and then we'll give that a little mix any pieces that are still unbound facing up we'll turn those over to possibly get a little more color but because we did crowd this and there's a lot of moisture in there that second side really isn't gonna Brown too well which reminds me we haven't added any salt at this point because that would have drawn out extra liquid which we don't need here but that's okay we're going to add some in just a few seconds so like I said we're gonna Brown that meat the best we can at which point we can reduce our heat to medium and add one large diced onion along with that salt we promised so a big pinch of salt and then what we'll do is we'll cook those stirring until those onions soften up a little bit and start to turn translucent which should take I don't know four minutes maybe but you'll know because you're going to be looking at them and when they're just about right they should look something like this and at this point we'll stop and add our herbs and spices and for my chili verde and by mine of course I mean the one I stole for my old chef I'm going to be using some dry oregano and sure I love the fresh but in this particular recipe the dry does work better and then we're also going to do some ground cumin as well adds a little bit of coriander and then last but not least just to stay in shape we will do a few shakes of cayenne and once we stir all that together what we should do is cook that for about two minutes just give those seasonings a little wake up in that hot fat and then once that's been accomplished what we'll do is we'll turn our heat down to low while we blend our sauce and ideally where you're about to see me do at this point in the video you've already been working on while your meat was browning and your onions were cooking but anyway like I said we'll leave our meat mixture on low while we put our sauce together starring this tell my TOS and no these are not green tomatoes they are related to them they're also a member of the nightshade family and what we'll need to do is pull off that paper husk and rinse off any mysterious black schmutz and don't be afraid they're a little bit sticky but like I said we'll pull off those outer paper shells and give em a rinse and then once we have our tomatillos deep papered and rinsed we can go ahead and add those to a blender but before I do I like to cut them in quarters I think they blend up much better that way and it only takes a second so we will cut those up and add them to the blender and then we're also going to need some garlic and a good amount of it as well as some jalapeno pepper that had been seated or pretty much seated there may be a couple in there I'm also going to do some green poblano pepper or any other green pepper for that matter then we'll also toss in a handful of cilantro which yes is optional if you don't eat cilantro and by the way tell your friends to leave you alone and stop trying to force you to eat it for ten percent of the population cilantro tastes like soap it's actually a chemical reaction on the tongue so there's no shame and then we'll finish this off with a couple cups of chicken broth and sure you can use water if you're afraid of this being too flavorful but of course that's up to you you are the jefe of your verde so at this point we can head over to the blender where we will liquefy the world's worst smoothie but one of the greatest sauces ever so we'll start by putting on and off as per usual and once it starts to break down we will let it rip until we have a very very smooth very very fine puree and then you've probably figured out what's coming next we will take that we will pour it into our pork mixture and stir that in and come on how beautiful is that green color too bad it doesn't last as you'll see as this cooks it turns into more of an olive green still gorgeous but just not quite as fresh and bright we're also going to turn our heat up to high because we do want to bring this up to a boil and we will at this point also add some more salt all right we put a little bit in earlier with the onions and we're going to put some more in now and we'll also put in more later with the potatoes and then we're also going to toss in one bay leaf and we will bring this mixture up to a boil on high and then we will reduce our heat and try to maintain a slow but steady simmer and all we're going to do is simmer this stirring occasionally for about one hour before we add our potatoes and like I said you're going to see that color change and of course you also may see some fat rising to the top and you can skim that off if you want I usually do so like I said well some of that meat for about an hour before adding our potatoes so I'm going to toss in about a pound and a half of Yukon Gold potatoes that I peeled and quartered and we will season those potatoes with another addition of salt as well as its good friend freshly ground black pepper and we will stir all that together and of course like every stew and soup ever made in history if you think it needs a splash of liquid which I did right here add some totally appropriate and very good evidence that you're actually cooking and not just reading a set of instructions so I stirred in a little more broth and then the rest of this recipe is as easy as it is obvious we're simply going to continue simmering for about I'm going to say 45 minutes to an hour something like that until our potatoes and meat are fork tender and that's really going to depend on how big you cut your potatoes and meat so feel free to start checking earlier but after about 45 minutes mine seems just about right and I could tell my potatoes were cooked by just looking at him and after poking a couple of those pieces of meat with the fork I was able to confirm my chili verde was done and pretty much ready to serve and I say pretty much because you have to taste it for seasoning especially salt so I gave mine a taste and because I was seasoning along the way it was perfect so at that point I ladled up into a nice hot bowl and man does that look good although I think I could sneak in one more potato and then you know me I love to garnish so I'm going to finish this off with a dollop of sour cream as well as some homemade pickled red onions which are just an incredibly beautiful color I really should show you how to make those but it's only one ingredient so maybe I'll just tell you in the blog post and then last but not least a little bit of torn cilantro and Chef John's version of Casa del Sol's version of chili verde is done and as far as bowls of stew go looking very very inviting so I'm going to go ahead and dig right in and you guys know I love pork but I think possibly the potatoes are my favorite part of this dish the way they absorb all those flavors is just incredible it actually sort of reminds me of some Indian potato curry as I've had but don't get me wrong the pork is equally fantastic and the flavor of tomatillo is a little hard to describe I would say it's a very savory kind of citrusy tomato ish flavor just really great stuff so anyway that's a chile verde all these years you've been walking by those tomatillos in the supermarket and wondering what the heck are those for well this is what those are for so I really do hope you give this a try head over to food which is calm for all the ingredient amounts and more PO as usual and as always enjoy you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 567,320

Keywords: Chili Con Carne (Dish), Tomatillo (Food), Pork (Food), Recipe (Website Category), Food (TV Genre), Stew (Type Of Dish), Cooking, chef, john, foodwishes, Mexican Food (Cuisine), entree, lunch, chili, chile, Kitchen

Id: yV-JLcOrXc4

Length: 7min 56sec (476 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/FloydMarley]

I love this sub, I've learned how to make stuff I never thought I'd be able to make. This is next on the hit list. Typically Sunday is Slow Cooker Sunday for me, but I can take it to the stove top for this. I Love chili verde.

Edit- I made it, and it's delicious. I added a hatch green chili, which was a good choice. Next time I'm not gonna seed the jalapeno, it needs significantly more heat. Still amazing though.