Chili gets me out of bed.
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Styles · Colorado, especially Pueblo and Denver, and New Mexico

Chili Verde

Pork and roasted green chile, ladled over the plate.

Beans: OptionalTomatoes: OptionalPasta: Never

Beans go inside the smothered burrito, not in the chili. Pueblo family recipes often use tomato; the state agriculture department’s 2025 recipe leaves it out. ICS rules ban pasta and rice.

An oval plate holding a burrito smothered in pale green chili flecked with diced green chile, a folded flour tortilla beside it.

Chili verde is pork stewed with roasted green chiles. In New Mexico it is usually eaten as green chile stew. In Colorado it is thickened with a flour roux and poured over burritos, rellenos and hamburgers, an order called smothered. The International Chili Society judges it as a separate competition category.

Colorado’s green chile is a pork stew of roasted green chiles, onion, garlic and broth, thickened with flour browned in fat. The version History Colorado publishes also adds tomato. Cooks eat it from a bowl with tortillas, but it does most of its work as a sauce. A burrito, chile relleno or hamburger ordered smothered arrives under a ladle of it. Sources spell the dish both chile and chili.

The chiles come from the Arkansas Valley around Pueblo. According to History Colorado, farmers there have grown chiles since at least the late 1800s, and Mexican traders and settlers may have brought them as early as the 1840s. The variety most Puebloans use now is the Mosco. Mike Bartolo, a Colorado State University vegetable crop specialist, developed it at the Arkansas Valley Research Center from seed left by his uncle, the farmer Harry Mosco, who died in 1988. Its thick wall holds up in the roasting drums. The Pueblo Chile Fest fills downtown Pueblo every year in mid-September.

In Denver the dish is tied to Stella Cordova. Born in Walsenburg in 1909, she was cooking at a burger drive-in at 1231 West 38th Avenue when its owner sold it to her in 1967 for $2,000. Business stayed slow until she started serving tacos, burritos and tostadas with green chile, made the way her grandmother had taught her. She kept the name, Chubby’s. By 2007 at least fifteen Colorado restaurants were using some version of it, most of them without her approval.

Pueblo has its own vehicle for green chile, the slopper. It is a hamburger on an open bun, smothered in green chile and usually topped with chopped onion. Gray’s Coors Tavern says it started serving the slopper in the 1950s, when a regular asked to have his burger covered. The Star Bar and other Pueblo restaurants dispute the claim. In 2025 the Colorado Department of Agriculture made the slopper its Colorado Proud recipe of the month.

New Mexico’s green chile stew is the closer cousin. It is coarsely chopped green chile with cubed or ground pork or beef and potato, and it stays in the bowl. Competition cooks use a broader definition. The International Chili Society defines chili verde as any meat or combination of meats cooked with green chili peppers, spices and other ingredients, and bars rice and pasta. The ICS has named a Chili Verde world champion since at least 2000. CASI’s current rulebook has no verde category.

Sources

  1. The History of the Pueblo Chile, History Colorado (2019)
  2. Pueblo green chile recipe, History Colorado
  3. Smothered in Flavor: Pueblo Chile Slopper Takes the Spotlight, Colorado Department of Agriculture (2025)
  4. Adam Cayton-Holland, 'Smothered: The Saga of the Chubby’s Empire,' Westword (2007)
  5. Seth Boster, 'However disputed, the slopper dominates in Pueblo,' Colorado Springs Gazette (2021)
  6. ICS Cook-Offs, International Chili Society
  7. World Championship Winning Recipes, International Chili Society
  8. Official CASI Rules, 2025-2027, Chili Appreciation Society International
  9. New Mexican cuisine, Wikipedia