Chile Rellenos Casserole (Hotdish!)

In Minnesota we call casseroles, hotdish. And this particular hotdish can be made as hot as you want. Now I know especially where I live, people don’t like spicy hot. I have a saying: Minnesota Nice but without the Spice.

So, in this recipe have options: the hot sauce you prefer, the peppers, the cheeses and, of course, you can always add a bit of cayenne.

Note: This recipe now is the second version. We liked the first, but 1. it was too hot using the Serrano peppers, and 2. there was just missing something.

Note: We have experimented and created another version that does not use any hot sauce and uses only raw peppers. What brought this change on is that our co-op finally carries chorizo, and it’s not one of those cheap brands you can find anywhere. We were really impressed. It’s made locally and it was delicious. So check below for the changes.

As always, choose your ingredients to be as organic as possible. The beef we used was locally raised and grass-fed. And for some reason, a lot of Mexican recipes you find call for hamburger. Having lived in Mexico, I never saw ONE single recipe that had hamburger in it. Even the tacos were made with shredded beef (or goat).

Ingredients: 

First the beef, cooked on the stove.

1 TBL coconut oil
1 lb beef (cut into tiny squares)
4 oz onion chopped (between a quarter and a half of an onion)
2 -3 cloves garlic (depending on their size)
1/4 cup your favorite hot sauce (we use the extra hot version of Frank’s Hot Sauce and then added about a tablespoon of Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce)
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp coriander
2 tsp turmeric
Peppers (mix them up, jalapeños,  poblanos, serranos, green chilis)

Next the liquid (you’ll pour evenly over everything)

¾ cup filtered water
¾ cup coconut milk powder (just a little more if you want it creamier)
3 TBL green banana flour
1 or 2 Vital Protein Bone Broth Stick Packs (or some good bone broth with amino acids)
1 rounded tsp cumin
2 tsp chili powder
2 eggs
½ – 1  tsp Celtic Sea Salt
½ tsp black pepper

Peppers & Cheese Toping

At least 10 ounces of green chiles. They are very mild, and so what we did (after making it TOO hot using only Serrano peppers) was we used two 4 oz cans of mild chilis, then about the same amount of sliced (pickled) jalapenos, and then halve that amount of Serranos. We chopped them all up and blended them together.

Fun Fact: you can use either pickled or fresh, and we assumed that the pickled peppers would make the best recipe. Wrong. A combination of fresh peppers worked best.

2 cups cheese (we prefer a sharp cheddar mixed with a pepper jack)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F while melting the coconut oil in your frying pan. Then add your hot sauce and fry up the meat, onion, and garlic in your spices, remember to save that rounded teaspoon of cumin and the salt and pepper to add those to your liquid.

Note on garlic: Always chop or crush your garlic first and let it sit for ten minutes before cooking. The wonderful chemicals in garlic are not there to begin with, but crushing releases the enzymes needed to make them. This is just a standard procedure for cooking with garlic.

While the meat is cooking, stir often, but grab a shaker (or a have a bowl ready with an immersion blender) to mix up the liquid portion.

In your shaker, add your filtered water, coconut milk powder and shake thoroughly. If you add other things too soon, the coconut milk powder has a tendency to clump. Then add the green banana flour, bone broth, salt and pepper, and that rounded teaspoon of cumin, and shake well (or blend in a bowl). When that’s all mixed well, add your eggs, but don’t forget, you are going to add one last thing (it’s cooking on the stove).

If you have trouble with clumping, use an immersion blender.

Green chilies come diced, so if you are adding jalapenos and Serranos, you’ll want to dice them up and stir together in a small bowl.

Then use half the peppers to layer the bottom of your casserole dish (or Pyrex as I’m using here).

Back to the meat. The meat doesn’t take long, so while your slicing, dicing, and mixing the liquid, turn down the heat or off and when you get back to the meat, you’ll notice it  is swimming in a nice sauce. You will add that sauce to your liquid. This is important. It was the thing that was missing from our first recipe. You need the meat sauce. You’ll love it.

Layer your meat over the peppers. Then, over that you layer your cheese (or in this case, cheeses [cheddar and pepper jack]).

Top with cheese, then top that with sliced/diced peppers, and then  pour your sauce over everything. The picture below is of our first try, and we did it without adding the meat sauce. The picture at the top of this article is our second try, with the meat sauce added. It truly made the meal.

Cook for 35 to 40 minutes and serve hot. Can be served on tortillas too.

Second Version with Chorizo!

Ingredients:

1 TBL coconut oil
1 lb chorizo
4 oz onion chopped
2 -3 cloves garlic (depending on their size)
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp coriander
2 tsp turmeric
Peppers (mix them up, jalapeños,  poblanos, serranos, green chilis)

Next the liquid (you’ll pour evenly over everything)

¾ cup filtered water
¾ cup coconut milk powder (just a little more if you want it creamier)
3 TBL green banana flour
1 or 2 Vital Protein Bone Broth Stick Packs
1 rounded tsp cumin
2 tsp chili powder
2 eggs
½ – 1  tsp Celtic Sea Salt
½ tsp black pepper

Peppers & Cheese Toping

At least 10 ounces of peppers: jalapeno, poblano, cayenne . . . you name it. Visit your farmers market and pick out some fresh peppers that are not too hot for your taste, and that’s it. Then half them and de-seed them. If they’re big, you can quarter them or cut them into strips.

2 cups cheese (we prefer a sharp cheddar mixed with a pepper jack)

Then follow the directions above, but make sure you mash up the chorizo so that it doesn’t clump.

We could not believe that this version was the tastiest.

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