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Chile Colorado

Pork Chile Colorado

This ain’t traditional “chili”. It’s big chunks of pork slow-cooked in hot pepper sauce, which you then eat wrapped in a tortilla. It’s my attempt at recreating a dish served at our local Mexican haunt, Fiesta Mariachi (formerly Casa Fiesta), where also comes in a Chile Verde variety with tangy tomatillos.

The meat is rich, rich, rich with hot red chiles … not incredibly spicy, just intense … and is full of that ephemeral 5th flavor that some call “umame”. I mean it. It’s rich with the flavor of ripe capsicum. I used pork country ribs; the restaurant uses some other cut, but it frankly doesn’t matter much.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs pork country ribs
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 5 whole roma tomatoes, diced
• 2 whole green jalapeños
• 2 tsp finely chopped garlic
• 1/2 Tbsp ground cumin
• 1/2 Tbsp ground black pepper
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 2 whole dried guajillo chiles
• 2 whole dried ancho chiles

Directions

Set the crock pot to cook for about 6 hours.

In a crock pot, place the ribs, onion, tomato, and jalapeños. Season with the garlic, cumin, salt, and pepper and mix well.

Prepare the dried chiles by first seeding and stemming them. Then, place the chiles in a small saucepan with about 3/4 c of water. Bring to a boil and simmer about 15 minutes. Remove from heat, and then blend the chiles with all the water in a blender, or using a stick blender. This should yield a deep red smooth sauce.

Pour the chile sauce into the crock pot with everything else.

Cook until the meat is falling off the bones and very easy to shred. Remove the meat from the pot, then debone, remove any fat chunks, and shred the meat. Strain the reserved liquid from the crockpot and incorporate back into the meat.

Serve the meat with tortillas, sour cream, lettuce, pico de gallo, or however you like to eat Mexican.