Green Chili Recipe (New Mexico Chile Verde)
by Sommer Collier — last updated on Apr 23, 2025 
Our Pork Green Chili Recipe (also know as New Mexico Chile Verde) is savory and boldm made with tomatillos, green chilies, and poblano peppers, it is perfect for spicy chili lovers!
What is Green Chili?
Chile Verde (Green Chili) is a stew popular in New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. It is known for not having an official recipe. It consists of slow-cooked green chiles and pork; all other ingredients are optional.
Locals would avidly tell you that the chile peppers you use matter quite a bit. The long green “New Mexican” style chiles are a state treasure. They say the dry barren soil of New Mexico produces the hottest and most flavorful chiles. Known commonly as Hatch Chiles (grown in Hatch) or Big Jims, these chiles are a source of great pride.
Sommer’s Recipe Notes
Why We Love This New Mexican Green Chili Recipe
New Mexicans are proud of their agriculture and the history behind their dishes. Their kitchen creations scream adaptability and survival. In blazing arid climates, what can you grow? Chiles.
And what can you make with an abundance of chiles?
The BEST Chile Verde.
For generations, locals have chosen to honor the chiles with great exuberance. The state question after all is, “Red or green?” As in, “Do you prefer to eat red or green chile?” Chiles are not just produced, they are a way of life.
New Mexico Chile Verde, also known as Green Chili, Green Chile Stew, or Green Chili with Pork, is a dish I discovered years ago on a cross-country trip. A native New Mexican friend made it for me, and I was baffled by the concept of chili that wasn’t red… And didn’t contain tomatoes, beans, or beef.
What a wonderful creation!
Ingredients You Need
I’ve prepared my version of New Mexico Green Chili with locally grown green chiles. I substituted a mixture of Anaheims (a milder New Mexican style chile), Poblanos for depth of flavor, and a couple of jalapeños for heat.
Here is what you need for green chili with pork:
- Oil – your preferred oil for sautéing
- Pork butt – or pork shoulder, trimmed and cubed
- Onion – peeled and chopped
- Garlic – minced
- Seasonings and spices – cumin, coriander, oregano, bay leaves and salt
- Peppers – Hatch chilies (or Anaheim peppers, poblano, and jalapeno)
- Tomatillos – peeled, cleaned, and chopped
- Cilantro – chopped
- Masa – aka corn flour
- Lime wedges – for garnish
How to Make Green Chili
Find the full New Mexico Green Chile recipe wit ingredient proportions, detailed instructions, and a video tutorial in the printable form at the bottom of the post.
Tips & Tricks
- Let it cook low and slow! To get super tender, melt-in-your-mouth pork, you have to let the pork green chili cook low and slow, for at least 3 hours! This will also give the sauce time to develop lots of flavor.
- For added flavor, you can use chicken broth instead of water. Just be careful when adding more salt. Make sure to taste the green chili before adding more salt at the end!
- This green chili with pork recipe gets most of its heat from the jalapeños. If you aren’t a fan of spicy foods, you can add just one jalapeño, and make sure to deseed it well! If you like it spicy, add two jalapeños and you can even add the seeds if you want.
Frequently Asked Questions
Stored in an airtight container, this green chili will keep well in the fridge for 3-4 days.
It also makes a wonderful meal prep and freezer meal! Leftovers can be stored in freezer bags or freezer-safe containers wrapped in tin foil and frozen for up to 3 months.
While I have not personally tried this New Mexico Chile Verde recipe in an Instant Pot or pressure cooker, I believe it would work very well.
You’ll need to use the Sauté function to first cook all of the ingredients per the recipe below, making sure to deglaze the pot before adding the masa-coated pork and water. Pressure cook on HIGH for 7 minutes and then do a Natural Pressure Release for 10 minutes.
Similarly, to prepare in a slow cooker you’ll first need to sauté the pork, onion, peppers, and tomatillos with seasonings on the stove. Then, transfer the ingredients to the slow cooker, stir, cover, and cook on HIGH for 3 hours or LOW for 5-6 hours.
It is gluten-free! Because I make this Green Chili with masa, there are no wheat-based ingredients.
If you don’t have masa on hand, you can either make your own quickie version by pulverizing corn tortilla chips in a food processor or try a simple swap like corn grits or rice flour to keep the recipe gluten-free.
You can also substitute with traditional wheat flour for a non-gluten-free version.
Absolutely! A large beef chuck roast or 3-4 chicken breasts would work as a great swap for the pork butt.
Let me know in the comments if you give this recipe a try or use any substitutes!
I highly recommend serving this hatch green chile stew with warm flour tortillas, homemade corn tortillas, or tortilla chips. Don’t forget to top it off with a squeeze of lime and fresh cilantro, or go big with shredded cheese, sour cream, chopped avocado, and scallions.
Looking for More Satisfying Stew and Chili Recipes? Be Sure to Also Try:
- Paleo White Chicken Chili Recipe
- Slow Cooker Brunswick Stew
- Original Jamaican Curry Chicken
- Best Turkey Chili Recipe
- Mexican Street Corn Chicken Chili
- Turkey Soup with Poblano Peppers
- The Best Beef Stew Recipe
New Mexico Green Chili Recipe
Video
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup oil
- 4 pounds pork butt, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
- 2 large onions, peeled and chopped
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- 1 tablespoon ground coriander
- 1 tablespoon oregano
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 Hatch peppers, chopped (or Anaheims)
- 2 Poblano peppers, chopped
- 1-2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and diced
- 1 pound tomatillos (peeled and cleaned), chopped
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 bunch cilantro (large), chopped
- 3 tablespoons masa (corn flour)
- 4 cups water or chicken stock
- 1 tablespoon salt, divided
- Lime wedges for garnish
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the pork and 2 teaspoons of salt. Brown the pork on all sides, stirring regularly. Remove the pork from the pot and pour out all rendered fat, saving about 1 tablespoon.
- Add the onions, remaining salt, cumin, coriander, and oregano to the pot. Sauté for 3-5 minutes. Then add the garlic and peppers. Sauté another 3-5 minutes. Add the chopped tomatillos, bay leaves, and cilantro. Toss the pork with the masa and add back to the pot. Stir well.
- Finally add the water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low. Cover and simmer for 3 hours, or until the pork is falling apart, stirring occasionally.
- Take 2 forks and break the pork up even more. Salt and pepper to taste.
simply great bowl of mexican chile…the fresh greens are looking so vibrant, wud luv to give it a shot !
Wow, mouth.watering. That bowl of yumminess looks fantastic! Thank you for changing it up for me, Sommer… I have seen a whole lot of pink and red today..my eyes needed a rest. :)
This reminds me of some of the Indian cooking that I do! I dont eat pork but will be substituting chicken or turkey!
yum!
Jas from http://www.facebook.com/oureyeseatfirst and http://www.oureyeseatfirst.com
That looks amazing and just right up my alley. Those fritos are perfect for scooping it right out of the bowl.
Sommer, this chile verde looks amazing! Great job with it…t he meat looks so tender and flavorful. And amazingly, there are so many greens in it. I love that there isn’t any official recipe for this dish, that means I can make it and not worry about making it wrong ;)
I am more than happy to eat some greens at this pinky day! :-)) Looks very delicious.
My freezer has been stocked with Hatch chiles for over 30 years. Every September we used to drive down to NM and bring back a gunny sack full, and I’d spend two days roasting them. But now, each fall, they can be found roasting all over the city of Denver. I have tried the Big Jim’s, they can be a little too hot, depending on the season. Green Chile with pork is such a wonderful dish. Poblano’s are one of my favorite peppers and even though I’ve never used them for this soup, I think they’d make a wonderful addition. I’ve never put tomatillas in mine, sounds like an interesting idea.
Delicious! My husband loves chile verde.
Hatch, New Mexico is on my bucket list. I think it would be a chile and pepper extravaganza! Cheers!
Your melting pot comment got me thinking …
They say the apple does fall far from the tree. Then again, whenever someone isn’t like Mom or Dad, they always say that the factor in question tends to skip a generation. So I guess there’s a saying for everything.
The other day my dad told me that he thought it was interesting that he had made it some sixty-odd years on this planet without ever seeing a chipotle pepper, and now he can’t turn around without bumping into one. You can get chipotle in sauces at McDonalds, in Kraft mayonnaise, and in every brand of salsa on the grocery store shelf. And you don’t have to live in the southwest to find it any more. It’s everywhere.
To my dad, this is an unwelcomed change. It’s a sign that the world is changing too quickly. If someone wants to seek out a foreign new flavor, he should have to seek it out. Stumbling onto it is fine, but having it thrust is our faces is something else. Call it progress, but at some level it’s a sign that the old ways are just that, the old ways, on their way out, being replaced at a rate that some of us are not quite ready for.
And it’s not like my dad is a white bread, steak and potatoes type. Granted, you can count the great Irish culinary contributions to society on one hand, but my dad did live in New Orleans for the better part of two decades. And those folks will mix just about anything together and call it something I can’t pronounce. So it’s not that the chipotle itself is too weird for him; he’s just not crazy about the intrusion of a regional flavor into places where it shouldn’t be, like the center aisles of the grocery store and generic fast food restaurants.
When he told me that he was about sick of having chipotle sauces shoved in his face, he might as well have been speaking Martian and trying to explain string theory to me. For starters, it seems to be the free market at work. There must be a demand for it, or it wouldn’t be there. And while there may be a marginal at best societal benefit to increased Scoville-awareness, I have trouble understanding a down side to people from other here sharing a bite to eat with people over there. And if they can’t share an actual sit-down meal, then sharing the techniques are the next best thing.
Where my dad sees the old, familiar ways being crowded out, I only see the continual process of refining and refining and refining that which we have. I can whip up a tray of blackberry cobbler, but that doesn’t mean I’m replacing my great-grandmother’s chocolate chip cookies, which will always be the gold standard for desserts. I’m not so sure culture is a zero net game. The addition of X doesn’t mean that Y must decrease by the same amount.
But it is interesting that father and son are wired so differently. My dad wants to be able to walk into the grocery store and see everything he expects in the place where it should be. I want to walk in there and get surprised by something I’ve never heard of before, which I will then look up to see where it came from and what one does with it.
Yeah, it’s tricky for sure. People respond quite differently to changes and preferences in food. I personally like the “progress” as long as the effects aren’t detrimental!
I wanted to reply to Steve’s post, even though it is from almost 8 years ago. Your words really struck a chord with me, because I see your dad in myself, although I do ride both sides of the fence when it comes to foods remaining in their respective regions of the country. I’m almost 59, and I can identify with your dad’s opinion that “chipotle is everywhere. I too never heard of a chipotle pepper until this phenomenon hit. I love the idea that we should travel our great country and have each area’s “cultural experience”, but for some, that is impossible to do. I suppose the fact that Amazon can bring it to us in less than 48 hours is a blessing.
I think what really touched me about your dad is his feeling that something is lost now. I completely agree with him. My grandmother was a very large influence in my life, particularly with food, cooking it, and sharing it with family. She taught me to appreciate simple things, like eating tomatoes from the garden, or taking that tomato and adding some bell pepper and onion and a splash of Italian dressing. Cooking a delicious meal for family and friends was love. I tried to bring my own daughter up this way, but she and her husband almost act as though food from the garden has some sort of contamination; dirt, perhaps? They are all about going out to eat, rather than cooking, and my grandkids are being raised in that environment. There is no such thing as coming to grandma’s house and learning about the garden and cooking techniques. Gardens have bugs, and maybe even a snake, and it’s hot outside. I sometimes feel like I have so much history to share, and no one really cares. So while I appreciate a thriving economy and the ability to have the culinary world at our fingertips, I too feel sad at times. Something is lost indeed; something simple and wonderful.
I agree. I cook. I don’t have kids/ grandkids, but I understand completely the issue about prefwrring to go out, etc. luckily, my grandparents had a veg garden and my Mom has always liked to cook.
Ooooo, this looks so good!! Really bright flavors!!
It’s true…no one does green chilis like this! Fantastic!