Chile Relleno Pancake

2 minute read

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Chile rellenos is a classic Mexican dish. It’s comprised of a green pepper, stuffed with cheese, battered and fried.

Composition

At it’s core, this dish has flavours and textures of a roasted pepper, melty cheese, and fried batter. Jalapeño poppers are a similar dish, in this regard.

Pepper

The green pepper used is typically a Poblano. This pepper is mild and sweet. It’s large enough to be meaningfully stuffed.

It’s very similar to a green bell pepper. They’re less watery and have more flavour as a result. I believe that you could substitute poblanos whenever you use green bell peppers.

The poblano is commonly misnamed as the Pasilla pepper in the United States. This might be because their dried forms both share the same name, chile ancho.

Cheese

It’s common to use a melting cheese. These can be Monterey Jack or Oaxaca cheese.

The cheese is cut into a large brick, similar to mozarella sticks.

Batter

The batter is a egg batter. You separate egg white and beat until soft peaks. Then the egg yolk is folded in.

The batter is pretty much a soufflé. So if you’ve had these dishes, the texture will feel familiar.

Sauce

Chile relleno is served with salsa over top. It’s poured over top, like a smothered burrito.

I’m not personally a huge fan of the saucing battered foods but this is not an uncommon technique across cuisines:

  • katsudon
  • wings
  • chimichanga

Recipe

Now that we understand the composition of the dish, the recipe should come together.

  1. Char poblano peppers and remove the skin. This adds a smoky flavour to the dish.
  2. Separate egg white and yolk. Beat whites until soft peaks. Fold in beaten yolks.
  3. Split open pepper and stuff with cheese and other fillings.
  4. Dredge and batter.
  5. Shallow fry until cooked.

Pancakes

This dish is quite laborious, especially for the home cook. Chef John has a recipe that turns this dish into a pancake. It’s much less faff if you’re making it for one or two servings.

The key is to recognize what is laborious and where we can insert shortcuts:

  • Deep-frying has a huge overhead, compared to pan-frying.
  • Deep-frying is needed because we’re using a whole pepper.
  • If we deconstruct the pepper (chop it up), it’ll have a slimmer profile and we can pan-fry.
  • Modifying the batter with addition of flour shifts the egg soufflé towards pancake. Note that it’s common for soufflé recipes to include a binding starch.

I agree with Chef John’s assessment: these pancakes hit all the flavour and texture notes of chile relleno. The only thing that changes is the eating experience, so it’s not like you’ll stop going to your local Mexican eatery.