I have always loved mexican food. I really enjoy enchiladas verdes, you know the chicken enchiladas with a green tangy sauce poured over the top of them. So, I wondered how to grow tomatillos. The tomatillo is a cousin of the tomato but will not cross pollinate with tomatoes. It also doesn't really taste like a tomato at all though it looks like a small green tomato when ripe. And no, you cannot substitute green tomatoes for tomatillos in verde sauce.
First things first, I tried to grow the tomatillos from seed....didn't work so well. So, I ended up buying the plants from an heirloom organic grower. They are really cool little plants that have paper lantern type bells that form and then the tomatillo fruit grows inside until it reaches maturity and splits the paper-like casing.
Here is about 1 1/2 pounds of the ripe tomatillos. They have a kind of sticky substance between the paper casing and the tomatillo so it makes your fingers really sticky.
All I did was wash and quarter the tomatillos and put into a casserole dish with a drizzle of olive oil to keep it from sticking.
I added 1 diced up onion, 1 jalapeno, 2-3 cloves of garlic, and a fist full of cilantro. I then put it in the oven at 350 until it roasts and bakes down to something like you will see in the next picture. This took about 45 minutes to an hour.
The final step was to scrape out the roasted concoction and pulse it in a food processor. Excuse my dinosaur of a food processor, but it still works!
The result was a tangy, slightly spicy verde sauce that worked very well on our enchiladas. It was way better than the store bought stuff I usually use. Next go round I am going to freeze some like I do my chicken broth (see how here) and maybe try canning some too.
