The jalapeño chicken recipe (Pollo Jalapeño)

The dish called jalapeño chicken is called that way for two reasons: first, obviously it takes its name from the famous chile used in the recipe, the famous jalapeño pepper... and second, this dish was created in Xalapa, the same city the jalapeño chile is said to have originated from! The tradition says that this chile comes from Xalapa (Jalapa), in the state of Veracruz. Nowadays, of course the cultivation of the jalapeño chile is made throughout Mexico and the United States; it is mostly planted before the start of the rainy season, at the beginning of which we get high temperatures which favor its growth. Each plant (jalapeño) provides between 30 and 35 elongated fleshy fruits (about 4 inches long by 1 inch wide), which are used in all stages of growth, before and after maturation.

From the jalapeño chile was created the chipotle chile or "smoked chile" in the original Nahuatl language, which is the jalapeño chile after undergoing a specific drying treatment, which will decrease the intensity of its hotness, but this degree of hotness will depend more on the field of culture and climate than the smoking process itself. Like all chiles, and especially the spicy ones like the jalapeño, they lose much of their intensity if the veins and seeds are removed at the time of preparation, which is where the true chemical ingredient that causes the hotness is mostly present: the capsaicin. This gives a very delicate and persistent flavor that marries itself wonderfully with many kinds of food, especially those with a smooth taste to which it can give an extra kick without completely overtaking the delicious taste of each other ingredients of a given dish.