Anaheim

The Anaheim is a New Mexico chile by parentage, but takes its name from Southern California through commercial happenstance. In 1894, Emilio Ortega - whose family would later found the Ortega chile brand - brought New Mexico chile seeds back to his hometown of Anaheim, California. Local cultivation took off, and "Anaheim chile" became the regional name despite the variety's New Mexican origins. The Anaheim sits within the broader New Mexico chile family, which traces back to the original Spanish colonisation of New Mexico in the 16th century. The chile was developed and refined through centuries of cultivation by Pueblo peoples, Hispanic farmers, and later by horticulturalists at New Mexico State University, where formal breeding programmes have produced dozens of New Mexico cultivars over the past century. In cooking, the Anaheim is the workhorse of mild Southwestern cuisine. Roasted and peeled, it forms the base of green chile sauce, chiles rellenos, and countless Tex-Mex preparations. Hatch chiles - the highly prized New Mexico chiles from the Hatch Valley - are essentially Anaheim-family peppers grown in the specific microclimate that gives them their famed flavour, though Hatch and Anaheim are now treated as distinct in commercial markets. The Anaheim's genuine mildness made it the gateway chilli for American mainstream cooking - introducing generations of cooks to chile flavour without the heat barrier that kept jalapeños and serranos from broader adoption. It remains the most widely cultivated chilli in the United States by volume.