HOT COMMODITY
Rio Rancho couple dehydrate red, green chile sauces to create easily shipped products
Several years ago, traveling engineer Alan Porter found himself in a personal dilemma — he craved Hatch green chile. Unfortunately for him, he was stationed to work in Oregon.
“(My job) would send me out of state for 6-7 months, so trying to get green chile was a nightmare,” he said. “We had one batch confiscated by the TSA and another went missing.”
In 2009, Alan decided to do something about it. Armed with his wife Paula’s green chile recipe, Alan began work on a dehydrated chile sauce that could easily travel from state to state.
After considering 14 chile vendors and receiving feedback from friends and family for the last eight years, Alan and Paula have turned their recipes into commercial products, opening Paulita’s New Mexico last month.
Paulita’s New Mexico is a homegrown and home-operated culinary business that sells green chile products, including packaged hot and mild dehydrated green chile sauce and green chile seasoning. Paulita’s also sells a green chile marinade and green chile salad dressing, with future plans to sell green chile “salsacue” and a dehydrated red chile sauce. The company’s products are sold online through their website at paulitasnewmexico.com.
The company’s dehydrated green chile sauce includes Hatch green chiles that go through the same dehydration process that red chile caribe traditionally goes through.
“When you rehydrate it and thicken it according to the instructions … you can make green chile stew with that, you can make calabacitas, you can make green chile corn chowder. It’s unlimited what you can do,” Paula said.
The company’s target audience are Hatch green chile lovers who live outside New Mexico. Because their chile sauce is dehydrated, it ships for a fraction of the cost of a canned product.
Paula and Alan run Paulita’s New Mexico from their house near Sara Road, where the two built a commercial kitchen next to the side of their home. Although Alan is still a full-time engineer and Paula works fulltime as a customer success manager at Samba Safety, they can be found working on weeknights and weekends in their kitchen, dehydrating chiles and packaging sauces.