Chipotle

This article is about the chile pepper. For the restaurant chain, see Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Chipotle
Heat	Hot (SR: 10,000-50,000)

Chipotles (pronounced chee-POTE-lays; IPA English: /tʃɪ'pʰoʊʔːlez/; IPA Spanish: /tʃi'potːles) are smoke-dried jalapeño chilis used primarily in Mexican, Mexican-American, Tex-Mex and Mexican-inspired cuisine.

There are many varieties of jalapeños which vary in size and heat. In Mexico, the jalapeño is also known as the cuaresmeño and gordo. Until recently, chipotles were almost exclusively found in the markets of central and southern Mexico. As Mexican food became more popular in the United States in the late 20th century, jalapeño production and processing began to move into Northern Mexico and the United States.

Production

Chipotle

Typically, a grower will pass through a jalapeño field multiple times, picking the best green jalapeños for market. At the end of the growing season, jalapeños naturally begin to turn red. There is an extensive fresh market for red jalapeños in both Mexico and the United States. Many U.S. growers disk the red jalapeños into the ground. In Mexico, the red jalapeños are saved and sold in markets for premium prices. They are kept on the vine as long as possible. When the jalapeños are deep red and have lost much of their moisture, they are selected to be made into chipotles.

The red jalapeños are moved to a closed smoking chamber where they are spread out on metal grills. Wood is placed into a firebox and the smoke enters the sealed chamber. Every few hours, a person enters the smoking chamber and stirs the jalapeños to allow for the penetration of the smoke. The chiles are smoked for several days until most of the moisture is removed. At the end of the process, the chipotles are dried up in a manner akin to prunes or raisins. The underlying heat of the jalapeños is combined with the taste of smoke. Typically, it takes ten pounds of jalapeños to make one pound of chipotle.

In recent years, growers have started to use large gas dryers. Some processors have even started to use liquid smoke. These commercial techniques produce what most culinary experts believe to be an inferior chipotle chile.

Varieties

Most chipotle chiles are produced in the Northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. This variety of chipotle is known as a morita (Spanish for blackberry or black raspberry; literally "little purple one"). This is a description of how the chipotle looks. In central and southern Mexico, chipotle chiles are known as chile meco, chile ahumado, or tipico, whereas moritas from Chihuahua are purple in color, chile meco is tan/grey in color and has the general appearance of a cigar butt. Almost all of the chipotle chilis found in the United States are of the morita variety. Almost all of the chipotle meco is consumed in Mexico, though some is exported to the United States, where it is generally available only in Mexican grocery stores.

Chipotles can be purchased in many different forms, including chipotle powder, chipotle pods, chipotle adobo in a can, concentrated chipotle base and wet chipotle meat marinade.

In addition to moritas, other varieties of chiles can be smoke-dried, including red jalapeños, serranos, habaneros, New Mexican chiles, Hungarian wax chiles, Santa Fe Grande chiles, and a milder jalapeño called the TAM Mild Jalapeño (a cultivar named for Texas A&M University). Lesser-known varieties of smoked chiles include: Cobán, a piquín chile native to southern Mexico and Guatemala; Pasilla de Oaxaca: a variety of pasilla chile from Oaxaca used in mole negro; Jalapeño chico: jalapeños, smoked while still green; and capones: a rare and quite expensive smoked red jalapeño without seeds. "Capones" translates roughly into "castrated ones."

Use

Chipotles are a key ingredient that impart a relatively mild but earthy spiciness to many dishes in Mexican cuisine. The chiles are used to make various salsas. Chipotle chiles can also be ground up and combined with other spices to make a meat marinade known as an adobo.

Etymology

The word chipotle, which was also sometimes spelled chilpoctle and chilpotle, comes to English originally from the Nahuatl word chilpoctli by way of Mexican Spanish. The Nahuatl word chilpoctli means "smoked chile", formed from chil (="chile pepper") + poctli (="smoke"). The original Nahuatl word was spelled "pochilli" and has apparently become reversed. Today it is commonly misspelled and mispronounced as chipolte, an error of metathesis. Other early spellings from Mexico are tzilpoctil, tzonchilli and texochilli. The most common pronunciation is chee-POHT-lay, although some prefer the pronunciation chee-POHT-til. Some Mexicans refer to chipotles as chile poctle.

References

• Bayless, Rick (1987). Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. pp. 332–334. ISBN 0-688-04394-1. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Dewitt, Dave (1997). The Pepper Pantry: Chipotles. Celestial Arts. p. 96. ISBN 0-89087-828-5. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)