Mr. Write's Page

The Rio Grande begins in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado and flows south through New Mexico, dividing the state neatly in half. From El Paso onward to the Gulf, the river is the border between Texas and Mexico.

About 85 miles north of El Paso, where the Rio Grande passes through the broad, flat Rincon Valley, is the little town of Hatch, New Mexico.

I love Hatch. Dearly love it. I’ve been there twice, most recently on my drive home from Arizona earlier this month.

To me, the appeal is the town’s fun, friendly vibe — due mainly to the charming small operations in town that grow, harvest, process, and sell the product for which Hatch is renowned: chile peppers.

Hatch bills itself as the Chile Capitol of the World. The valley surrounding the town is dotted with numerous chile farms — acre after acre of hardy chile plants lovingly irrigated with water from the Rio Grande.

You’ll notice that I use the term chile, not chili. Hatch is 90 percent Hispanic (or Latino; I never know which is proper), so chile, the Spanish name of the pepper, is considered correct.

No known connection to the nation of Chile in South America.

The word chili, I learned, is an American bastardization. A discerning person should use the word chili to refer to the restaurant chain and chili con carne, but nothing else.

For reasons that escape a journalism major like me, chiles thrive in the climate and soil around Hatch.

The local farms grow many varieties of the plant, each variety having a known degree of heat. Thus, when the chiles are processed into, say, chile powder, the packages can be labeled as mild, medium, hot, extra hot, or ¡ay, caramba!

Unavoidably, Hatch is a tourist town. Most of the processing operations I’ve seen are fronted by a retail store, where you can buy not only fresh, frozen, dried, and preserved chile products, but also chile-related souvenirs, Hatch t-shirts, and, usually, an assortment of Mexican pottery.

But somehow, the businesses haven’t morphed into tourist traps. I know of only one shop where the prices are high and the atmosphere is a bit mercenary. The rest are simple, casual, friendly places with reasonable prices. What’s not to like?

But enough blather. Here are some photos.

Lastly, a bonus: interesting facts about peppers…

— Peppers are flowering plants from the nightshade family. They are cousins to the tomato, potato, and eggplant.

— Peppers fall into one of three categories: bell peppers, sweet peppers, hot peppers.

— Green peppers have been harvested early, before they’ve ripened to yellow, then orange, then red.

— Red peppers have been on the vine longest and are the most nutritious. A red pepper can have 10 times more beta-carotene and almost twice the vitamin C of a green pepper.

— Peppers also are loaded with potassium, magnesium, iron, and B vitamins.

— Hot peppers get their heat from the chemical capsaicin, which triggers the pain receptors in your mouth.

— The degree of heat depends on the pepper’s rating on the “Scoville scale,” which assigns each variety of pepper a rating in Scoville Heat Units (SHU).

— At the bottom of the Scoville scale are bell peppers, with zero SHU. Banana peppers and cherry peppers barely register, with a few hundred SHU.

— By contrast, Serrano peppers are rated at 10,000-23,000 SHU, and jalapeños are rated at 1,000-4,000 SHU.

— The hottest pepper in the world, according to Guinness World Records, is the Carolina Reaper, with an astounding 1,569,300 SHU. The Reaper was cultivated by the Puckerbutt Pepper Company of Fort Mill, South Carolina.

— India is the world’s largest producer, consumer, and exporter of chile peppers. But the citizens of Hatch probably pretend not to know about that.

Stuffed Hatch green chiles with cilantro-yogurt sauce. ¡Se ve delicioso!