Experimenting with New Mexico's Green Chile Cheeseburgers

A while ago Beer Snob Sr. told me a story about a certain delicacy he was lucky enough to enjoy while working in New Mexico. A tale was told about a certain type of cheeseburger which provided a flavor he had never come across and also hadn't been able to replicate in almost 10 years of trying.

Fast forward a few more months. My girlfriend's father tells me of a time in New Mexico. The first words out of his mouth were about a cheeseburger with green chilies on it. The taste of these burgers were so unique that he also couldn't find one that tasted anywhere close to the ones he had in New Mexico.

According to New Mexico's state website, the green chile cheeseburger originated around 1950. When Americans began to make use of highways more and more, burger establishments began to pop up along roadsides everywhere. In New Mexico, a few places took the state's staple crop and added used it as a burger topping.

Since I had two people tell me how mind-blowing the taste of the green chilies and cheese was on these burgers, I had to dive into it myself.

To begin, I had to find the most important ingredient in this experiment: the green chilies. I got myself a small can of them, minced some onion and mixed it with the chilies. Once the burgers were grilled and the cheese was placed, I gave them a nice helping of my onion/chile mix.

This being my first attempt, I was disappointed. The culprit was the onion. Too much use of the onion completely drowned out the powerful flavor of the green chilies. I reported my disappointment to Beer Snob Sr. and he was then driven to try the grand experiment once again.

After he made one more attempt at recreating this elusive flavor, he told me to not use any onion. Just put the chilies on the burger without doing anything to them. Another touch he added was rubbing the beef patties in chili powder before grilling them.

I replicated this procedure and was much more pleased this time around. The taste of the chilies comes through. The chilies aren't that spicy, but the chili powder on the meat packed the punch I was looking for.

I'm looking forward to playing around with this recipe in the future. Maybe some pepper jack cheese to add some more spice instead of regular American? Tabasco sauce? I've also read some things saying that red chilies work as well.

Recommended Beer Pairings: With anything beef, I usually lean towards a type of Pale Ale. With these burgers last night I went with a Flying Dog Raging Bitch Belgian IPA