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Story & Photos by Dave DeWitt
First I started coughing. Then I sneezed repeatedly. My nose started running like a faucet. I was coming down with a severe case of "chipotle flu" caused by the capsaicin fumes and pecan wood smoke of Border Land Farms’ "Chipotle Texas" operation in the tiny town of Ft. Hancock.
Why, you ask, why would a cotton and chile farmer who had never heard of chipotles until 2002 risk three quarters of a million dollars on a state-of-the-art chipotle production facility? Because the smoke-dried jalapeños are big business in the U.S., with everyone from the McIlhenny Company (the Tabasco® people) to Chipotle Grill (owned by McDonald’s) using chipotles in gigantic quantities for sauces and flavorings, that’s why.
Another reason is that traditional chipotle supplies from Mexico are often unreliable, of poor quality, and are sometimes difficult to get through Customs. Gale Carr, a farmer with a masters’ degree in business, believes that American-made chipotles offering quality, consistency, and cleanliness will soon take over from the imports–-and he showed me the lab reports to prove the higher quality of his chipotles. “Basically, we are taking two by-products that nobody wants–-red jalapeños and pecan tree trimmings–-and turning them into a gourmet product,” he said. The Chipotle Texas operation is managed by Gale Carr and is owned by his grandfather, J.A. Carr, and Gale's father, Kenneth Carr.
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Jalapeños being sorted and cleaned ... |
... and machine-sliced. |
Carr’s plant processes 40,000 pounds of fresh jalapeños a day. From huge trucks, the pods are cleaned of debris, sorted, washed, disinfected, and sliced using an elaborate series of conveyors, and then are placed on large wooden trays in tall metal racks. They are dehydrated in large cinder block tunnels that use burners generating four million BTUs, and the heat is circulated using aircraft propellers.
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Firing up the dehydrator.
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The partially dried pods are then smoked in special rooms using a proprietary process. The smoke was so thick in the rooms I couldn’t even get a glimpse of the equipment being used, but Carr says the process is simpler than you’d think.
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The
finished chipotles
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Huge bags of chipotles piled high.
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On the day I visited, the Chipotle Texas plant was processing and smoking green jalapeños, which Carr believes will be a successful smoked product in addition to the whole red chipotles and chipotle powder. He is also experimenting with smoking red and green serranos and dried red New Mexican varieties.
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The finished products. Top
row, left to right: red
serranos, Middle row: red smoked powder; green unsmoked powder. Bottom row: smoked red New Mexicans, smoked red chipotles with stems on.
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After the tour of the facility, Carr took me to a local café, where we sipped on iced tea and tasted a bright red, fiery chipotle sauce made with his product. It was delicious. As I munched on chips dipped in the sauce, I noticed that my sneezing had ceased, my nose had stopped running, and my taste buds were now tingling.
Reach Chipotle Texas through Border Land Farms at www.chipotletexas.com or at 915-769-3831.
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