With how well the chiles are doing, we’ve got a constant supply of these red and green beauties in our refrigerator. It’s a good thing we love peppers and appreciate the subtle heat, because we’ve been putting chiles in just about everything we can think of (except for our morning cereal).

Our dilemma isn’t new. Latin Americans have been finding creative ways to eat their chiles for thousands of years. One of the classic ways to eat a chile is to stuff it. “Chiles rellenos,” Spanish for “stuffed chiles,” is a localized twist on what many people are familiar with as stuffed bell peppers. The biggest difference between the two is the method of preparation and, of course, the resulting flavor. We adapted a Mexican recipe that uses poblano chiles and substituted with our distinctly New Mexican Joe E. Parkers instead.

2 servings

• 6 chiles, roasted and whole (we roasted ours on a gas stove like this–just don’t split them open) (our source: Mysterious Horizons Farm)
• 1/2 lb ground beef
• 1/4 C onion, chopped
• 2 small tomatoes, chopped (our source: Mysterious Horizons Farm)
• 1 egg, beaten
• flour for coating

1. Brown the onions in a pan over medium heat until translucent.

2. Add the ground beef and cook until done. Remove from heat, set aside, and allow to cool.

3. Mix ground beef and onions with tomatoes in a bowl, with salt and pepper to taste.

4. Cut a 2″ slit in the peppers and carefully scrape out as many seeds as you can with a butter knife. Some people choose to leave the seeds in if the chiles are mild enough. We left ours in.

5. Stuff each pepper gently with the ground beef mixture.

6. Close the slits with toothpicks. It’s not going to be perfect, but it’s just to keep all the beef from falling out during the following steps.

7. Dredge the chiles in the egg and then roll in flour, shaking off excess. Set them aside until all are coated.

8. Heat oil in a large pan over medium to high heat. Add chiles, turning as they brown.

We plan on making this again, but next time we want to change up our batter to more closely resemble the original recipe and see how that turns out. One lesson we learned while consuming this dish is that chiles are hotter towards the stem, so consider yourselves forewarned!