chile verde

Stephanie's CHILE VERDE RECIPE

This will be our second recipe from "Make it Fast, Cook it Slow" by Stephanie O'Dea. The heart of this recipe is the slow-cooked beef, the fresh taste of tomatillos, the tang of tomato, a bit of spices, and a bit of heat. Change it up, use what you have/love. Cook it forever, until you can shred the meat quite easily. Serve it over brown rice and top it with cheese and sour cream.

And since slow-cookers are a forgiving way of cooking, I have to admit I have never made it strictly according to the script. Let me 'splain...

We had a bunch of green tomatoes at the end of the season last year, so both batches used green tomatoes (3-4 fresh replaces a 14-oz can of diced), rather than the red canned ones the recipe calls for. Tomatillos come in a variety of sizes, so who knows if my ten were the same as her ten. I put them both into the food processor to "chop", as she recommends for the tomatillos, and then did the same with the green peppers and onions to save time and a dirty cutting board/knife. All of that turned into a soupy green mess: perfect for simmering the meat!!

I'm "averse" to sage, so I omitted the sage and replaced it with a little thyme. I'm not a huge fan of cumin, so I cut that in half. We are partial to mexican oregano.

As for the meat, I used some sort of beef chuck roast as she calls for. We also had a ton of hot peppers from the garden, so I used a few of those instead of the red pepper flakes. I omitted the diced green chiles in our second batch.

I hope you test this recipe for yourself, make some substitutions based on what sounds good to you, and enjoy!

Much Love,
Able Bodied Girl