Hatch Chile Pico De Gallo

Dive into a bowl of Hatch Chile Pico de Gallo, featuring smoky chiles, juicy tomatoes, fresh cilantro, sweet onion, and a splash of lime. This seasonal salsa is hard to beat, pairing perfectly with grilled meats and vegetables. Don’t worry, it’s still chip-dip approved.

Starting with flavors from my classic Fresh Pico De Gallo, this recipe swaps out the common jalapeno for the unique Hatch chile. Their smoky, slightly sweet, and buttery flavor is unlike any other chile pepper, giving this fresh salsa a unique twist.

What are Hatch Chiles?

Hatch chiles are spicy, richly flavored chiles grown in Hatch Valley, New Mexico. Every season during late summer they are harvested, so it’s a sense of urgency to find fresh ones!

The unique smoky and buttery flavor works very well in a fresh pico de gallo, creating a deeper flavor profile to pair with grilled or smoked meats. Of course, any bag of corn chips will work very well too.

Preparing the Salsa

Thankfully this Hatch chile pico de Gallo is very simple to throw together.

There is one extra step: Roasting the Hatch chiles.

It helps if you have a bunch of them ready to go in your fridge or freezer. If you need a detailed breakdown of all of the steps for roasting and storing, please refer to this handy, comprehensive article:

Read All About Hatch Chiles here! You’ll find plenty of tips on how to roast them, store them for freshness, and plenty of ideas for delicious recipes. 

• Dice all of your ingredients. Remove the seeds and cores from the tomatoes. Try to dice everything into even sizes. The tomatoes will be the largest dice. Make your onions a smaller dice, and the chiles the smallest.
• Season and macerate. Add all of the ingredients to a bowl and stir them up with a fork. Add your salt and pepper to taste. Allow the pico de gallo to rest for at least an hour before serving so the lime and salt can permeate all of the ingredients and mellow the onions and jalapeno.
• Taste and adjust. Give the salsa a taste before serving. As the juices come out of the vegetables you may need to add a little additional salt.

Important Tips

• Wear gloves while chopping your chiles. At the very least, avoid rubbing your eyes or picking your nose.
• Roma tomatoes are key. These have less water content than most others.
• Red means hot, and green usually means mild-medium. Hatch chiles can vary with spice level, so make sure you taste your chiles and pay attention to the colors. It’s easy to overdo it.
• Rest the salsa in the fridge. This will allow the lime and salt to work their magic, mellowing out the raw onion and marrying all of the flavors.

How to Serve

Let’s be honest, the firs thing we should all grab is a tortilla chip. Don’t stop there though, we have plenty of extremely tasty pairings:

• Tacos Dorados: Crispy Fried Ground Beef Tacos
• Creamy Pinto Bean Dip
• Spicy Blackened Corn
• Mexican Chopped Cheese Sandwich
• Sonoran Hot Dogs
• Carne Asada Tacos
• Hatch Chiles Queso Burger (shown below)

Thank You For Trying Our Recipe!

We’re here to bring people together with bold flavors, using spice and flames to ignite the food and friendships.

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