Mirrored from The OEconomist. You can comment there or here.

Okay, a few people demanded this recipe after I tweeted about the deliciousness of my dinner, so here it is. This is pretty much a mishmash of the top few chili verde links I found on Google, but it’s my mish-mash, and it resulted in what’s the tastiest chili I’ve had since leaving the US, and possibly for a good while before that.

• 2 tblsp cooking oil (whatever kind you like)
• ~600g pork, diced
• 1 onion, diced
• 3+ semi-hot green chilis (jalapenos or similar; I use some longer kind I don’t know the name of), seeded and finely diced
• 8 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 2 tsp cumin, ground
• 1 tblsp oregano, dried
• 2 cups (500mL) vegetable or chicken stock, water, or beer
• 1 large can tomatillos, drained and chopped (~800g)
• 1 large green bell pepper (capsicum)
• 1 bunch cilantro/coriander leaves, chopped (put some aside for garnish)
• 2 cans white cannelini beans (or 3-4 cups cooked from dry) drained
• additional chili (flakes, powder, hot sauce, whatever) to taste
• 1/2 tsp salt, or more to taste

Heat some oil in a heavy pot and brown the pork. Do it in two batches so the meat really browns, and doesn’t just stew in its juices. Set aside.

Put a little more oil in the pot and saute the onion and green chilis in it until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic and cumin and continue to saute until fragrant. Add a little stock/water and deglaze the pan if it has brown stuff stuck to it (mine certainly did after browning the pork), then add the rest of the liquid along with the chopped tomatillos. Bring to the boil, then simmer.

If you’re a plan-ahead person, you can do this step well in advance. If you’re a great multi-tasker, then you can do it while the pork browns and the onions saute. If you’re neither, then you can do it now — it’s no big deal, anyway, so now’s as good a time as any to char the skin of the green capsicum/bell pepper. You can do this under the grill/broiler, or over the gas flame of your stove (just drop it right on top of the burner), or using whatever other technique you like. When it’s black all over, or almost, cover it loosely with a cloth or a plastic or paper bag and let it sweat a few minutes as it cools. When cool enough to handle, remove the black, blistered skin then de-seed and chop the rest of the capsicum into short, thin slivers (mine were about 2cm x 0.5cm or, if you don’t like metric, 3/4″ x 1/4″). Toss them into the pot along with the oregano and most of the coriander/cilantro — leave some aside for garnish, though, because you’ll want that later.

And that’s everything for the sauce! Let it simmer for a few minutes. Go wipe down your bench and wash a few dishes or something — it only needs a quick cook. When that’s done, use a blender to blend the sauce til most of the chunks are gone. If you have an immersion blender, then just stick it in and give it a few whizzes. If you have a jug-style blender, like I do, then just ladle out most of the sauce and give it a few pulses, leaving a bit behind, say 1/4 of it, so there’s still a bit of texture. Your overall goal is a mostly-smooth-ish sauce with a few bits of onion and pepper and stuff for texture and colour.

Hurrah, you’ve done pretty much all the work! Now is the time to taste it, and if you think you’ll want it spicier, add some chili in whatever form you like. I’m fond of dried red pepper flakes, so I added a good pinch, probably about a teaspoon full at this point.

Put the browned pork chunks back into the sauce, put the lid on your pot, and put it over the lowest heat you can for at least an hour, or longer if you want — up to three hours would be fine, if it’s a weekend and you are just having one of those lazy cooking afternoons. In any case, by the time that’s done your pork chunks should be tender enough to break apart when you press them against the edge of the pot with the edge of a wooden spoon.

Now you can add the beans. Just dump ‘em in, then bring the chili back to the boil and give it another taste. Adjust your flavours — I added salt and more red pepper flakes at this point. Cook for another 15-30 minutes, or leave it over the lowest heat for, oh, hours really. It’ll only get better. Good for parties!

Serve with rice or tortillas, and have hot sauce, sour cream, and chopped coriander standing by as DIY additions for those who like them.

The quantities I’ve given give a fairly soupy, liquid chili, which is the way I like this dish. If you like it thicker, use less stock/water/beer.

A note on spice: the 3 green chilis I used made the sauce very mild to start with, and I upped the spice twice as it cooked. If you like it spicy and know your chilis well, you could get more enthusiastic earlier on. No harm in waiting, though; a couple of different kinds of chili gives more depth of flavour, in my opinion, and it’s better to under-spice at first than to over-spice, since you can’t easily bring it back.