Next: about 4 to 5 Sept 2027
Hatch Chile Festival
The Labor Day weekend harvest festival of New Mexico, with chilli roasting in drums and green chile on everything.

Spices for Hatch Chile Festival
Each late summer the village of Hatch, New Mexico, holds a festival around its famous chile harvest. Long green Hatch chillies are roasted in rotating cages over gas flames until the skin blackens, peeled and frozen for use all year in stews, burgers and enchiladas. In New Mexico, "red or green?" is the official state question at restaurants, and green chile sauce is the colour of a state-wide food identity. The chilli arrived with the Spanish in the 16th century, but was grown by the Pueblo peoples for generations before that.
The spices
Written by the EveryMasala desk with AI assistance. Background: "Hatch, New Mexico" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Chili pepper: Takeaway, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Cumin: Sanjay Acharya, CC BY-SA 3.0, source