Poblano

The poblano is a mild, heart-shaped chili pepper from Puebla, Mexico, prized for its rich, earthy flavour and meaty texture. When fresh and green, it's called poblano; when dried, it becomes the wrinkled, sweet ancho chile. This versatile pepper is the foundation of chiles rellenos and essential to authentic mole poblano.

History & lineage

The poblano takes its name from Puebla, the Mexican state and city where it has been cultivated for centuries. "Poblano" simply means "from Puebla" - a marker of the variety's deep regional identity in central Mexico, where it remains a foundational cooking pepper. The poblano's most famous role is in chiles en nogada, a dish created in 1821 by Augustinian nuns in Puebla to celebrate Mexican independence. The dish - poblanos stuffed with picadillo, covered in walnut cream sauce, and topped with pomegranate seeds - features the colours of the Mexican flag (green poblano, white sauce, red seeds). It remains a national dish of cultural significance, served particularly during August and September around independence celebrations. When dried, the poblano transforms entirely. The fresh, mild, slightly grassy chilli becomes the ancho - sweeter, with notes of dried fruit and tobacco, and one of the three primary chillies in traditional mole sauces. The transformation is so complete that ancho is treated as essentially a separate ingredient in Mexican cooking, despite being the same pepper at a different life stage. There is enduring confusion between the poblano and the pasilla - at least three different chillies are sometimes called "pasilla" in different regions of Mexico and the United States. The dried poblano is most accurately called ancho; the dried chilaca is the true pasilla.

Its dried names cause more confusion than any other chilli in Mexican cooking. A ripened, dried poblano is an ancho — wide, wrinkled, sweet, faintly of raisin. But a second strain, ripening chocolate-brown rather than red, dries into the mulato: darker, smokier and less fruity. Both are sold as "dried poblano", and a mole recipe calling for one will taste noticeably different made with the other, which is why the good recipes name all three.

It is also the pepper behind chile en nogada, the dish Puebla serves in the weeks around Mexican independence: a roasted poblano stuffed with picadillo, covered in walnut cream and scattered with pomegranate, the three colours of the flag on one plate. Fresh poblanos are genuinely unpredictable for heat — most are mild enough for a child, and every so often one arrives with real bite — because unlike a bell pepper nobody has bred the variability out of it.

Culinary uses

Roast it and peel it. The skin is tough and does not soften with cooking, so a poblano is blistered over a flame or under a hot grill, sweated in a covered bowl and rubbed clean before it is used — that step is not optional, and it is also where the flavour deepens from green to smoky. From there it becomes chiles rellenos, stuffed with cheese and fried in an egg batter; rajas con crema, cut into strips and simmered with onion and cream; or the base of a mole. Thick walls are what make it the stuffing chilli of Mexican cooking, and the same walls are why it is dried as ancho rather than eaten dried whole.

Growing it in the UK

Annuum is the forgiving group, and the right place to start. Seed germinates readily in warmth, the season is short enough to finish outdoors in a good summer, and February to early March is soon enough to sow. Germination is given as 8-14 days. At 65 days to maturity it is one of the quick ones: sown in March, it will be picking well before the light goes.

At 60–90 cm this is a substantial plant. Give it a 10-litre pot or a greenhouse border, and stake it before the fruit sets rather than after. The record puts the yield at heavy, so start feeding weekly with something high in potassium as soon as the first fruit sets — a plant carrying that much will run out of steam otherwise.

Thick walls suit it to stuffing, roasting and fresh use rather than drying.

Read from this variety's own record — the figures are in the panel opposite.