Storing Chipotle in Adobo

Many times after opening a can of chipotle chiles in adobo and using what I need, there are still a lot left over. I usually put the leftovers in a Zip-Loc bag and store them in the fridge. Does anyone have a clue as to how long these peppers will stay good in the fridge? I get the feeling that they are much like ketchup and will stay usable for quite a while, but I'd like some educated opinions on this.

I've found they typically mold before I use them again. Disappointing.
It's been suggested that I freeze them in single-serving size, but I never seem to get around to that.

Frankly, I've stopped using canned chipotles. Every couple of years I make a batch of Rick Bayless' Sweet-Smoky Chipotle Seasoning Paste, and use that anywhere I'd use chipotles. The "Black Oil" as I call it is amazingly hot and flavorful. Nothing seems to grow on it either.

I keep a bag of dried chipotles around. I've found it easier to just rehydrate what I need.

Where do you buy these? Local or mail order?

I live in Hanover Park which has a decent sized Mexican population (I think, just not right next door to me).

Caputo's has a lot of dried peppers, no chipotles. Today they didn't even have chorizo at the meat counter, so I went to a small Mexican store called Chapala's on Irving Pk & Barrington. They have great chorizo, but in their selection of dried peppers, once again no chipotles.

Unless they have an alternate name..... What was the small one I saw, Morito or something???

Oh, and if I decide to buy that hog head from the meat counter at Chapala's, should I cut off the cheeks and try to make guanciale, and then broth from the rest of it? Funny to see that head just after reading the funny pork broth story in the Zuni Cafe cookbook.

Thanks for the advice,

Nancy

I bought my dried chipotles locally at Lindo Michoacan. Chipotles are smoked jalapenos. The moritas are pretty close as they are made from a smaller ripe red jalapeno and are not smoked as long. Sometimes I'll sub the chipotle with the morita as they don't seem to be as hot.

JSM

Lindo Michoacan
3148 W Lawrence Ave, Chicago, 60625 -
(773) 539-6627

stevez wrote:Many times after opening a can of chipotle chiles in adobo and using what I need, there are still a lot left over. I usually put the leftovers in a Zip-Loc bag and store them in the fridge. Does anyone have a clue as to how long these peppers will stay good in the fridge? I get the feeling that they are much like ketchup and will stay usable for quite a while, but I'd like some educated opinions on this.

They get moldy after a week or so. I put them in the freezer in a zip lock. To thaw them, put the bag in warm water. A microwave will melt the bag. Ask me how I know.

Kit

I've managed to keep leftovers of the canned kind in the fridge for much longer (at least four weeks IIRC) in an airtight plastic/glass container. I'm careful to use a dry spoon when I take a portion out of the original can or container.

Varieties of dried chipotles are available through The Spice House and Penzey's.

Thanks Kit. I think I'll give that a try. I know I can get frersh-dried ones in the markets, but I'm partial to the canned ones in adobo for many dishes.

JSM wrote:I bought my dried chipotles locally at Lindo Michoacan. Chipotles are smoked jalapenos. The moritas are pretty close as they are made from a smaller ripe red jalapeno and are not smoked as long. Sometimes I'll sub the chipotle with the morita as they don't seem to be as hot.

JSM

Lindo Michoacan
3148 W Lawrence Ave, Chicago, 60625 -
(773) 539-6627

I was at the Maxwell St. Market today, and the "pepper guy" (used to be under the viaduct, now on Taylor west of Canal) told me that the little red peppers (moritas) were brothers (hermanos) of the chipotle. I wasn't entirely sure what he meant, but it sounds like the main difference is in the amount of time they're smoked (chipotle smoked longer) and their relative heat (chipotle not so hot).

Hammond

David Hammond wrote:I was at the Maxwell St. Market today, and the "pepper guy" (used to be under the viaduct, now on Taylor west of Canal) told me that the little red peppers (moritas) were brothers (hermanos) of the chipotle. I wasn't entirely sure what he meant, but it sounds like the main difference is in the amount of time they're smoked (chipotle smoked longer) and their relative heat (chipotle not so hot).

Hammond,

Glad to know the pepper guy moved as I'm due for a dried pepper stock-up.

I thought exactly the same, in fact I think it was the same pepper guy who told me, morita were a premium/harder to find subset of chipotle, though it seems that is actually a mora pepper and morita is smoked dried serrano.

What finally cleared up the confusion for me wasthis post by Amata.

Enjoy,
Gary

JSM wrote:Chipotles are smoked jalapenos. The moritas are pretty close as they are made from a smaller ripe red jalapeno and are not smoked as long.

G Wiv wrote:I thought exactly the same, in fact I think it was the same pepper guy who told me, morita were a premium/harder to find subset of chipotle, though it seems that is actually a mora pepper and morita is smoked dried serrano.

My sources agree with JSM. Here are a few online cites:

http://www.panix.com/~clay/cookbook/sal ... i?chipotle

http://www.fiery-foods.com/dave/profile_chipotles.html

http://www.recipehound.com/chile_dried.html#MORA

http://www.foodsubs.com/Chiledry.html


Smoked serrano
Morita
Chipotle tipico

What I do after opening a can of chipotles in adobo is place the chipotles on a baking tray lined with wax paper, split the adobo amongst the "kids" and stick the tray in the freezer. When completely frozen, I toss them into a freezer storage bag. Since they are individually frozen, I can grab what I need when I need it. I take out the desired quantity and set in a bowl to defrost (takes about 15 minutes).

They keep for a long time in the freezer, although I use them in three months or so.

I've wondered the same thing about canned chipotles. I like the freezing suggestions which I'll probably follow those in the future.

I've noticed that the time-til-mold setting in varies by brand. I'm not sure why, but the San Marco's chipotles mold very quickly. So now I buy La Preferida brand chipotles which seem to last indefinitely in a ziplock in the fridge.

MJ

Gary, thanks for linking to the previous discussion of moras and moritas. As I said about halfway down in that thread, there seems to be variation (perhaps regional, perhaps among individual speakers) in how the diminutive morita is used. LAZ's English-language links (one of which is plagiarizing from another in typical internet fashion) state unequivocally that the idea that a morita is a smoked serrano is wrong. That position is naive and itself wrong.

What is clear is that there are two different types of dried jalapeños, one tobacco-colored (and typically larger), which is called meco, and the other blackberry-colored (and typically smaller), which is called mora (literally 'blackberry'). The difference in color is clearly the most important factor, because there are also chiles called mora grande.

So the question is, what kind of chile does the diminutive of mora, morita, designate?

In some places, or in the speech of some speakers, morita seems to be the same type of chile as a mora, just a small one. For example, Nancy Zaslavsky, in A Cook's Tour of Mexico, says that the chiles moras made from the season's last picking are called moritas. In the thread Gary linked to Joel F quotes Bayless as giving morita as an alternate name for mora. This is the usage that the sites linked by LAZ think is the only correct one. And obviously, using the diminutive to refer to small moras makes sense.

On the other hand, it also makes sense that the diminutive could be used for a different chile, smaller than the chile mora but similar in its treatment (that is, smoke-dried). Diana Kennedy, in My Mexico, follows this practice when she asserts that moritas are a separate chile from moras. Moreover, the chiles which I received from the Maxwell Street chile vendor and wrote about in the linked thread are clearly smoked serranos. I think anyone who looks at the photo in my post (link) will agree that it is a serrano shape and not a jalapeño. David Hammond's post above, where he reports that the Maxwell St. guy calls the morita a 'brother' of the chipotle seems to imply that they are different chiles, too.

A further interesting thing to note is that there is also a morita grande. This combination of words only makes sense if morita (in some places, for some speakers) refers to a distinct chile and is not just a small mora.

It seems clear that both usages are legitimate, and that the strong position represented in the links LAZ gives above is simply incorrect. (Also incorrect is the claim found in those sites that the mora/morita is inferior and less smoky. In the old, linked, thread Joel F quotes Bayless as saying that the flavors of the meco are less deep than those of the mora/morita, and certainly the moritas at Maxwell Street are excellent and exceptionally smoky.)

Once again, I encourage anyone interested in these or other unusual chiles to seek out the vendor at Maxwell Street Market. David, thanks for the update on his current location.

Amata

Amata wrote:It seems clear that both usages are legitimate, and that the strong position represented in the links LAZ gives above is simply incorrect.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the links I gave were definitive; I just didn't have time to type out a lot of things from books. I meant to point out that the jalapeno definition seems most common. Obviously, people are using the term for both types of peppers or the writers of those sites wouldn't have felt it necessary to "correct" them.

It's clear that there's a lot of confusion over this terminology. In fact, there probably is no definitive answer -- these are common names, after all. This sort of thing is why the binomial system of plant classification was invented, and even there, the lumpers and the splitters don't agree.

What a street vendor in Chicago says a pepper is called may or may not have anything to do with what it's called by anybody else, in Mexico or elsewhere. Especially since they're all just different cultivars of Capsicum annuum. It would not be at all surprising to find that, to some, a "morita" is any small, reddish, smoked pepper.

You can't get too analytical about it -- that way lies madness. Pretty soon you get tangled up with people who call bell peppers "mangoes" or end up trying to sort out all the different species of fish sold as "sea bass."

JSM wrote: The moritas are pretty close as they are made from a smaller ripe red jalapeno and are not smoked as long.

Amata wrote:LAZ's English-language links (one of which is plagiarizing from another in typical internet fashion) state unequivocally that the idea that a morita is a smoked serrano is wrong. That position is naive and itself wrong.

I remember a PBS program (maybe part of a Burt Wolf episode) in which the morita was described as smoked red jalepeños. It was mentioned that this was a dying breed of peppers (and pepper smokers) as the smoking on top of the red ripened peppers was too labor/time intensive. Also specifically mentioned was that the smoked serranos were taking over the name.
Zarela Martinez (in "Food from my heart") also specifies smoked jalapeños as the morita*

Again, it is hard to say what was/is the correct and 'originial' name was (and what is even meant by 'original'). Yet interestingly although some sources suggest that calling the smoked serrano a morita is incorrect, I haven't come across the opposite (suggesting that the name spilled over from the serrano to the jalepeño).

*edited for correct

I freeze the leftover peppers first wrapping them individually in plastic wrap. When needed I find I can still chop them frozen and throw them into whatever I'm making right from the freezer.
Paulette

Hello Everyone,
I'm new and I finally feel I have something to contribute. I used to buy canned chipotles in adobo and would store them in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks with no ill effects. I've since found a recipe for chipotles in adobo that are far superior to any of the canned products I've tried. I store the homemade variety in a glass container in the refrigerator for up to 3 weeks. Sometimes I'll whirl the whole lot in the food processor and then freeze in small servings in ice cube trays or zip top bags. Enjoy!

http://recipecircus.com/recipes/MEANCHE ... Sauce.html

TEC

Edited to remove recipe and to link to said recipe. Not that I cook the chipotles uncovered over very low heat for 2 -2.5 hours or so. That is the only difference in my recipe.