roasted chiles
Aimee HerringMany recipes call for dried chiles. To enhance their flavor, the chiles are often roasted first, then reconstituted in boiling water. Chef Iliana de la Vega of The Culinary Institute of America demonstrates how it's done. First, she heats up a griddle. (You can also use a skillet.) She cuts the tops off of the dried chiles, then opens the chile up, removing any stems and seeds. Next, she places the chile on the hot griddle, pressing down with tongs to ensure the flesh gets maximum contact with the heat. The chiles are finished when they begin to take on a new (usually orange) color and become more pliable. She then transfers them to a bowl of boiling-hot water to reconstitute. After 10-15 minutes, the chiles are soft, plump and ready to use.

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Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Chef Iliana de la Vega from the Culinary Institute of America, and I'm going to show you this kitchen basic: how to dry roast chiles.

Many recipes will call for dry roasting, or toasting, dried chiles. We have here a guajillo chile. The utensils we need are a knife or scissors; tongs; and a skillet, a griddle, or a comal. I'm going to turn that on, to start warming it up. We'll also need hot boiling water.

You take the chile and cut it, cut off the top, and then open it with scissors - it's quite easy - and you remove the seeds. With large chiles we always remove the seeds; you try not to leave even one seed in it, because you will begin to cough, and you don't want to cough. So remove all seeds! If you're not used to this, I will also advise you to wear gloves. Now this one is clean already. So that is one way to open it.

For this other one, I will use a knife to open it, then do exactly the same thing. Let's open it the regular way, just tearing it open lengthwise. Then it's exactly the same: remove all seeds, veins, anything that it has inside. You do this with this kind of chile, or any other large chiles.

Once you remove all this, we'll start dry roasting. This is a step that is often called for when you're making salsas or making moles, or any other kind of dish like that, that contains dried chiles. This griddle is warm right now. Using a pair of tongs, we take the chiles and we put them on top of there.

You will begin to see that they become softer. They're getting hotter and they're beginning to dry roast. When I flip it, you can see this shade here of orange on the inside - you know, it was upside down - and now we push on the other side. You will begin to see how they blister and get curly and also get softer, and that is what we're looking for. I will work a little bit on this one, pressing it down with the tongs. It doesn't matter if it closes. Just push it down: first one side, and then the other side.

One way you know it is ready is that they begin to change color, like these shades of orange here. They become softer, more pliable - now they're ready to be removed from the comal, and placed into the bowl of boiling water that we have ready. This will help to reconstitute the flesh. We roasted them to improve on the flavor, making it stronger; now we let the chiles reconstitute in the water for ten to fifteen minutes, until they're soft and you can almost see the flesh coming out.

Let's check. I'll take one out - and now you can see the pulp is pulpy and thicker, so they're ready. Now you just follow the recipe that this is required for. So this is how we reconstitute dry-roasted chiles.

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