By: Ernest Gurulé
As winter wanes, and with a degree of confidence that the season’s worst is past, Pueblo chili growers cautiously eye the fallow ground that, barring a fickle Mother Nature, will cooperate and turn a vibrant shade of green. In ten, maybe twelve weeks, they hope the tiny seeds planted in late April and early May will slowly transform, penetrate thousands of crusty clods of dirt and transform acre after acre into a kaleidoscope of nature’s art.
It has been a hotter than anticipated summer in southern Colorado. The heat, however, hasn’t hurt the crop. What it has done, say chili farmers, is added a bit more pop to their peppers. This year’s harvest will be hotter and, no doubt, add a little heat to a friendly rivalry in a longstanding border war.
New Mexico, Pueblo chili farmers say, may be the ‘land of enchantment,’ but that’s where it stops when you’re talking chili. New Mexico’s Hatch, once the gold standard of peppers, they’ll tell you, has been supplanted by Pueblo’s Anaheim, Fresnos, poblanos and the region’s standard bearer, the MiraSol, so named because it grows facing the sun.
The MiraSol is also the favorite for Carla Houghton. “The MiraSol is different than the average chili,” she said. “It has a distinct flavor.” Though not a scientist, Houghton and her family believe that flavor comes from the friendly soil “from here to Rocky Ford.” Also, chili farmers will say that Pueblo’s hot summer days and cool nights, add to the taste.
Houghton’s family has been in the chili business for generations. “My grandparents came from Italy and started farming,” she said. As the popularity and consistency of the product grew, so too did the operation. Its formal name is Mauro Farms and Bakery. The bakery arm, said Houghton, began “about 45 years ago.”
If all goes well and the weather holds, said Houghton, chili will continue to be harvested until October. A “hiccup in May,” when snow fell just before Memorial Day, “caused a little setback.” For a moment, it caused a bit of apprehension. But the hiccup was brief, and things are looking good and the perfect show opening for the steel city’s evergrowing ‘Chile and Frijoles Festival,’ set for the weekend of September 22-25.
The festival has turned into southern Colorado’s biggest fall events attracting more than a hundred thousand visitors and adding an estimated $6-8 million to the local economy. This will be the 28th year that the city has cleared historic Union Avenue for the ‘homage to chili’ festivities.
The Pueblo versus Hatch rivalry, though friendly, did inspire a bit of a tête-à-tête between the two state’s governors, Colorado’s Jared Polis and New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham. Polis proudly proclaimed that Pueblo’s peppers—and not New Mexico’s famous Hatch chilis—were not only better but now the pepper of choice for Whole Foods in Colorado, Kansas, Idaho and Utah.
Denver actor and radio personality, Debra Gallegos, is torn over her sentimental attachment to New Mexico and Hatch chili—especially the green—and southern Colorado’s. For texture, she said, “I prefer Hatch.” It’s also her choice for making rellenos. “Also, since my mom and her family were from a little town near Hatch called Rodney, it’s kind of a family thing.” Gallegos’ preference is not dissimilar to a lot of Houghton’s customers.
Houghton has New Mexico customers—who regularly call in orders for Pueblo chili. But it’s not only New Mexico customers; she said she ships chili, MiraSol, Anaheim and all varieties grown on her farm, to customers as far away as Ohio. She said, the consistency of southern Colorado’s chili and the fact that “they’re not too hot or too mild,” makes them an ideal choice.
On the Scoville Scale, the standard for measuring heat in any given pepper, Pueblo’s MiraSol comes in, said Houghton, “at around 5,550…not the hottest, not the mildest.” For perspective, Scoville measures the ‘ghost pepper,’ native to Northeastern India, at 417 percent hotter than your everyday jalapeño. The website Mashed.com recommends strongly against eating one. “If you pop an entire ghost pepper in your mouth, chances are you’re soon going to feel like you really are dying.” Of course, you’re free to try.
For expatriate Puebloans, of which an estimated 20,000 now reside in the Denver metro area, a Fall trip to Pueblo for their winter’s supply of chili is a rite of passage. Houghton said no one need worry about showing up and finding the crop’s been exhausted. Harvesting will continue until the first frost, usually a mid-October occurrence. But she also offered a word of caution. “August and September are the prime months to buy raw chili.”
A trip to Pueblo and Mauro Farms and Bakery is an hour and forty minutes from Denver on a good day. Houghton said from Interstate 25, “take exit 100A and follow to 36th Lane and take a right.” To get business hours, call 719.948.3381.
