Aztec Food – Welcome to Rosemarie's Kitchen

This is one of those times when canned ingredients are the only way to go. After all, unless you are growing your own jalapeño peppers, have a means to smoke-dry those peppers, you won’t find whole chipotle chilies in the produce aisle of your grocery store. A chipotle is not a type of chili pepper but rather a smoke-dried jalapeño. Typically, a grower passes through a jalapeño field many times, picking the unripe, green jalapeños for market. At the end of the growing season, jalapeños naturally ripen and turn bright red. In Mexico and the United States, there is a market for ripe red jalapeños. They are kept on the bush as long as possible. When they are deep red and have lost much of their moisture, they are picked to be made into chipotles.