Chipotle, Southern Oregon Style

If the above looks like a pile of sun-dried dog do, skip on over to another blog. But if you recognize these units as amazingly flavorful freshly smoked dead-ripe jalapeno peppers— better known as chipotle— you've come to the right place. What you see is the result of about 70 days of Rogue Valley, Oregon sun and soil and 15-20 hours in a little Chief Smoker loaded with smoldering cherry wood. Ohmigod! Chipotles can be purchased, but according to Dave DeWitt's Chile Pepper Encyclopedia, they will be inferior to the genuine article, which in all humility, is what you see here. You gotta start with RED RIPE jalapenos, which I have never seen in grocery stores, but then I've always lived in Podunk, USA, beginning with Minot, North Dakota, and ending, happily, with small acreage outside of Rogue River, Oregon.

Green jalapenos are great, especially in pico de gallo and other salsas, when you can't wait for red ones, but they don't have the deep flavor and sweetness necessary for the quintessential chipotle. Some farmers' markets sell red jalapenos, or you can make a special request to a grower, as a friend did, to let the peppers ripen before picking. Best yet is to grow them yourself. If you have a climate comparable to the Rogue Valley (or Southern New Mexico), no problem!

PK is a pepper addict whose passion I've come by through osmosis. I use chipotle —and about a dozen other peppers—year-round in my own kitchen, and love giving chipotle peppers as a special gift to friends and family. Here's what a smoker load of about-to-be chipotle peppers looks like. The stems are removed, but that's it for prep. So pretty!

Once the peppers come out of the smoker, they are anywhere from brittle to slightly pliable. If they're still tacky, they should be stored in the freezer. I put most in glass jars. This year, the first batch wasn't out of the smoker for 10 seconds—we had a pent-up demand for chipotle, nerves were frayed—before I snared enough to stuff a pint jar, fill it with scalding water, and wait a few hours for those babies to rehydrate so I could make chipotle cubes.

Chipotle cubes are a little trick I learned when PK and I were nosing around in a dirt-floored ristra shop in New Mexico a couple years ago. Noting our excitement at the chipotle bin, the shop owner approached us to share everything he knew. What stuck with me, in addition to how NOT to wet stems and leaves when watering pepper plants, was the part about making chipotle cubes.
Here's how: Soak smoked peppers in a pint jar filled with water. You can soak for hours if you fill with boiling water, or for days, if you use cold water and refrigerate. After peppers are rehydrated, remove anything that's left of the stem, then dump them and the whole peppers and the soaking water into a blender. (Before adding the water, test to see if it's bitter. In the unlikely event it is, discard.) Rev up the blender to liquify. Pour the results into ice cube trays that have been lightly sprayed with oil. After they freeze, you will be the proud owner of intensely flavored frozen cubes of smoky hotness, perfect for stews, soups, and sauces. Here's the recipe for an ever-present sauce in our refrig that requires approximately five minutes prep:

Creamy Steamy Chipotle Sauce
2-3 cubes frozen chipotle
2/3 c mayo (more or less)
2/3 c sour cream (more or less)
2 -3 tsp. lemon or lime juice.
Mix and serve over, or with, grilled meats, fish, veggies, eggs, or atop soups or stews.

Uses for chipotle cubes, in addition to the simple but scrumptious sauce above, include adding to soups, stews, braised meats, salsas, or whatever suits your fancy. Chipotle cubes automatically qualify you as a gourmet cook! You may also add whole chipotle peppers to recipes, but the cubes distribute the flavor more evenly and eliminate the surprise, not pleasant to all, of biting into a searing chunk. By the way, the commercial canned chipotle in adobo sauce has it's uses, but it isn't even close in depth of flavor to homemade chipotle. Not even close.

Back to Dave DeWitt and his Chile Pepper Encyclopedia. He includes an amazing-sounding Chipotle Chile Sauce recipe, page 99, that includes lots of garlic and spices such as cumin seeds, half a cinnamon stick, peppercorns, sesame seeds and a bunch of other stuff. Maybe after toiling mightily to grow and smoke the peppers, it would be worthwhile to try something more complex than my simple mayo-sour cream-based sauce. Maybe I will. In the meantime, I'll enjoy what's on tonight's menu: grilled marinated London broil; sauted zukes with onion and fresh red jalapeno; marinated cucumbers and onion, all topped with creamy, steamy chipotle sauce. Yum.