Peach, corn and hatch green chiles all folded into one beautiful bowl of salsa! If there is one recipe you make from my blog this summer, let it be this one. It comes together fast and is incredibly versatile (see below for serving suggestions). This hatch green chile salsa is a nice change from the more traditional tomato versions out there.

I alluded to this recipe in my IG story after hitting up the farmer’s market last weekend because the three star ingredients are all Colorado specialities during this time of year. After mixing them all together, the result is sweet and spicy with a little bit of added texture and freshness from the corn. I know you will love it!

Seasonal Palisade Peaches

Any fresh ripe peaches will suffice here, but I specifically used Palisade Peaches which are grown on the Western Slope (in a town called Palisade) about 15 miles from Grand Junction. These peaches are EVERYTHING and Coloradans goes totally bananas for them in the late summer.

There’s even a Palisade peach festival which takes place in mid-August every year. People buy boxes of these things to take back home to preserve, use in baked goods or eat straight up. Luckily, they are also available at the local grocery stores and they sell like crazy. It’s definitely one of the most iconic foods here (in addition to beer and Rocky Mountain Oysters I suppose… we’ll save that for another post).

I also used palisade peaches in my Proscuitto Wrapped Peaches with Basil and Blue Cheese. Both recipes pair sweet and savory with fresh summer herbs and are total crowd-pleasers!

What are Hatch Green Chiles?

I actually didn’t realize it until I started writing this post, but the true “Hatch” chile name actually refers to the location where it was grown in New Mexico. There are similar varieties grown in Pueblo, Colorado but they are technically just “fire-roasted green chiles”. I love the slight amount of heat these add to the salsa to balance out the sweetness from the peach. 

According to this site, Hatch green chiles are a relative of the Anaheim chile. They are traditionally fire-roasted and peeled which produces a wonderful fiery flavor. These give off quite the aroma when roasted. You can always smell them at the local markets and they are hard to pass up. 

Summer Olathe Sweet Corn

Olathe Corn season is another highly anticipated time in Colorado. It’s hard to beat a good cob of corn that’s just barely cooked and smeared with butter. In this recipe I decided to keep it raw because it’s so darn fresh (and let’s be real, so I didn’t have to turn on the grill). I’m sure it would be amazing if you gave it a little bit of char first too.

As with most things in my cooking repertoire, my finishing touch was a healthy handful of cilantro and the juice from a lime. This is so incredibly easy – there’s literally one step once you have everything out and prepped. Mix it together.

Creative Ways to Use Hatch Green Chile Salsa

To keep things simple, you can plate up your salsa with some tortilla chips and call it good. Here are three more creative ways to use it without getting bored!

• For a dinner option, spoon it over a piece of grilled salmon or trout to add something fresh and colorful.
• Use it as a burrito bowl topping! I’m hugely in favor of this because it adds a fun twist to something really simple (basically my cooking mantra in a nutshell).

• Serve it over toast spread with ricotta cheese for another appetizer twist. 

Regardless of how you serve it, just make sure you try this before the summer produce is gone. You can thank me later!

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