{"id":563,"date":"2024-12-30T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2024-12-30T13:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/macroron.com\/?p=563"},"modified":"2025-01-01T17:14:20","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T17:14:20","slug":"a-quest-to-recreate-childhood-chile-relleno-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macroron.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/30\/a-quest-to-recreate-childhood-chile-relleno-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"A quest to recreate childhood chile relleno magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: This is part of The Know\u2019s series,\u00a0Staff Favorites<\/a>. Each week, we offer our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We\u2019ll also let you in on some hidden gems.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

The seventh and final move of my childhood was to the Texas Panhandle. My divorced dad had arrived a couple of months before in an oil-company transfer, and he couldn’t wait to show me a few of his favorite local gems: Lake Meredith, the red clay hills along the Canadian River, Sutphens BBQ restaurant and Lorene’s Mexican Kitchen — specifically for the chile rellenos.<\/p>\n

He was trying to get me to think this move was a good thing.<\/p>\n

At the age of 14, I had never had a chile relleno before, so I had nothing to compare them to. After eating this local treasure, I thought all chile rellenos had a wonderful ground beef filling in a long chile with a crispy coating served on top of a yellow queso.<\/p>\n

But after graduating high school, I began ordering chile rellenos in restaurants in other cities and was disappointed. Cheese on the inside, a soft batter, covered in a chile sauce. None were like Lorene’s.<\/p>\n

I soon realized Lorene’s relleno was the outlier. Yet to me, any chile relleno is better than any other Tex-Mex food as long as I can at least taste the chile beneath all the batter and cheese. And most of the time, what I was being served was a traditional relleno experience.<\/p>\n

Since then, I’ve tried different versions, including one with raisins and pecans in it — a newfangled version of an old-fashioned picadillo variety. I have had the roasted poblano stuffed with cheese and one stuffed with chicken, both with no batter coating. Sometimes, the relleno is wrapped in either a tortilla or egg roll wrapper and fried. Sometimes I’ll order crispy, and it will come smothered, kinda softening the outer shell. I’ve even suggested that The Denver Post have a contest to find the best relleno. So far, my local favorite — a poblano stuffed with Oaxaca cheese — is from Machete Tequilas + Tacos, at 3570 E. Colfax Ave.<\/p>\n

But Lorene’s relleno remains the one to beat. There was no visit home to Texas that didn’t involve at least one stop there near the circle drive on the north side of Borger, Texas. You would always run into someone you knew from the surrounding towns of Fritch or Stinnett.<\/p>\n

In Colorado, a friend once drove me to a restaurant in Loveland to try its rellenos. They were great, and it was definitely worth the drive, but they were not the same. Did anybody make them like Lorene? Is it a regional difference? There was only one person to ask: Lorene Richardson.<\/p>\n

Turns out Lorene retired at the age of 92; she will be 97 in February. Her children carried on the torch and now serve their mom’s favorite recipes to the community at Village Kids restaurant in Borger. Daughter Shelia Melton said her mom is still going strong.<\/p>\n

Lorene’s opened in the 1960s. “My pop and his brother-in-law came up with the recipes,” Melton said. For the relleno, her dad came up with the secret ingredient for the batter. And I mean secret<\/em>. The family owners mix the dry ingredients, and the staff has only to add the wet ingredients. They use Anaheim peppers, but have used Hatch peppers as well.<\/p>\n

Melton said an employee once worked hard to try to figure out the recipe.<\/p>\n

“She thought she had it down. She took it to a local restaurant here,” Shelia said, laughing. “She didn’t have it,” she scoffed.<\/p>\n

Well, I don’t have it down either. But in my efforts, I came up with my second favorite version. And hopefully, with more practice, they will be as pretty as Lorene’s. But they will never be the same.<\/p>\n

\"Tongs
Tongs help keep lightly battered chiles together while frying.(TJ Hutchinson\/The Denver Post)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Crispy Chile Relleno with Ground Beef<\/h4>\n

Barbara Ellis, features coordinator at The Denver Post and a pretty good sous chef, helped me work out this recipe. I wanted a crisp but light batter on the outside, and wanted to taste the chile above everything else. So, we made a fine ground beef filling without overwhelming seasonings. To save time and effort, we used jarred queso, which worked great for our purposes. Remember, the point here is to have it lightly<\/em> battered.<\/p>\n

Serves 6-8.<\/p>\n

Ingredients<\/p>\n

6 large or 8 medium Anaheim peppers, long and straight<\/p>\n

1 pound ground beef, 80 to 85%<\/p>\n

1\/2 cup onion, diced<\/p>\n

2 serrano peppers, seeded and diced<\/p>\n

1 clove minced garlic<\/p>\n

1\/2 teaspoon cumin<\/p>\n

1\/8 teaspoon onion powder<\/p>\n

1\/4 teaspoon salt<\/p>\n

1\/2 teaspoon pepper<\/p>\n

Vegetable oil<\/p>\n

Fish fry mix, such as McCormick Golden Dipt Fish Fry Mix<\/p>\n

2 eggs, beaten<\/p>\n

2 tablespoons milk<\/p>\n

Jar of yellow queso, for serving<\/p>\n

Directions<\/p>\n

Roast the peppers, over an open flame on a gas stove, on the grill, or in the oven under the broiler. Roast until skin is charred and then sweat the peppers inside a plastic bag for 15 to 30 minutes, until skin peels off easily. (It’s OK if some black char stays on the pepper, as long as most of the skin is removed so that the batter can stick to the pepper.)<\/p>\n

Brown the ground beef with onion, diced serrano peppers, garlic, cumin, onion powder, garlic, salt and pepper. You can add more salt to taste. Break up the ground beef finely to make it easier to stuff into the pepper.<\/p>\n

Cut a slit near the top of the pepper, slicing through the inner seed pocket, without slicing through the bottom of the pepper. Then make a small vertical slit. Remove the seed pocket near the top, being careful not to rip too much pepper open.<\/p>\n

Stuff the peppers, carefully, with the ground beef mixture. Use long toothpicks to close the peppers for frying.<\/p>\n

Beat eggs with milk in a bowl long enough to accommodate the peppers.<\/p>\n

Pour 1 to 2 cups fry mix into another bowl (also long enough for the peppers.) You can add more fry mix as you go.<\/p>\n

Heat vegetable oil, about an inch deep, in pan or electric skillet.<\/p>\n

\"A
A crispy chile relleno stuffed with a ground beef mixture, bottom, goes well with a cheese-stuffed poblano relleno.(TJ Hutchinson\/The Denver Post)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Place peppers in egg mixture and spoon around the peppers to get them coated, but avoid getting egg mixture inside the pepper.\u00a0Batter the peppers with the fry mix, also avoiding the inside of the pepper.<\/p>\n

Fry in the skillet until crisp and brown, again avoiding getting oil in the interior. We used tongs and hold the peppers up while frying.<\/p>\n

To serve, heat the queso and place on a plate in a long strip to place the pepper on. Remove toothpicks and serve.<\/p>\n

Note: We used our same fry technique and batter to make cheese-stuffed poblano peppers, which made a great accompaniment to our beef-stuffed pepper. Using blocks of Oaxaca cheese stuffed in poblanos was easier to work with and we didn’t need the toothpicks to hold the sturdier poblano together. We served these topped with salsa.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, In The Know, to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: This is part of The Know\u2019s series,\u00a0Staff Favorites. Each week, we offer our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/macroron.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/macroron.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/macroron.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macroron.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macroron.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/macroron.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":568,"href":"https:\/\/macroron.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions\/568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macroron.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/macroron.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macroron.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macroron.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}