Once again I'm returning to a recipe I found at Simply Recipes. Here's today's variation.

Ingredients

• One 27-oz can of canned whole tomatillos
• Garlic, 8 cloves
• Pork shoulder, 2 lbs. (Food City's carnitas meat is fine.)
• Olive oil
• 2 onions, chopped
• Water, 2.5 cups, boiling
• 3 serranos, chopped. (You could probably substituted 2-3 raw jalapenos or 2 whole anaheims)
• 1.5 tsp of oregano
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Procedure

1. Cut pork into chunks. Brown in small batches in Dutch oven with olive oil. Put aside. If you are browning the meat in the Dutch oven, only the barest amount of oil is needed; you aren't deep frying them.
2. Broil five unpeeled cloves of garlic. Remove from oven. Peel.
3. Put chopped onions, three cloves of raw garlic and chopped serranos in frying pan. Fry till soft.
4. Drain the can of tomatillos. Put tomatillos through blender with broiled garlic. Pour into Dutch oven.
5. Add meat, water, oregano, green chiles, pepper, nutmeg. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat so that it simmers/slow boils uncovered for three hours or until pork is fork tender. Stir occasionally, scraping up the bits from the bottom. Lower temperature occasionally if it looks like it is boiling too hard. A constant simmer should be fine. Do not skip the scraping step, otherwise the sauce will thicken too much on the bottom of the Dutch oven and eventually burn, which will spoil the taste.
6. As necessary, add hot water to Dutch oven to maintain liquid. Use the microwave to bring it to boiling temp before adding.

This turned out great. I now consider my green chile recipe perfected.

Notes

• On one attempt I added the fried onions, serranos and garlic to the tomatillos in the blender and liquefied them. Turned out okay, but I think I like the texture of the stew better without doing that. Don't bother in the future.
• When frying the meat I didn't add pepper since I've read that frying the pepper makes it bitter. Better to add it with the tomatillos.
• I didn't add salt since the tomatillos are already pickled.
• If you need to add water to the stew, heat it up in the microwave first to avoid increasing cooking time.
• One could use chicken stock instead of water to make the flavor richer. That would doubtless work, but I think the flavor with just water is good.
• It is essential to use canned tomatillos. The canning process adds, I think, some vinegar and acid that is essential to the bright taste of the recipe. Sure, you can roast and process your own, but it really won't be the same.