Ultimate Southwestern comfort food: Hatch Green Chile Cheeseburger Soup

Special thanks to The Hatch Chile Store for sponsoring this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Hatch Green Chile Cheeseburger soup is hands down one of the most delicious soups I have ever created. AND, after some recipe testing, I figured out which type of melty cheese tastes the best in this soup which I’ll share below!

What is Hatch Green Chile?

Authentic Hatch green chile (In New Mexico chili peppers are spelled with an ‘e’) are chile peppers only grown in the state of New Mexico along the Rio Grande River in the Hatch Valley. The unique climate conditions and soil composition come together to grow the world’s best-tasting chile peppers.

Its popularity outside the state has grown tremendously over the last 30 or so years and in 2016 Hatch chile was finally trademarked, making it illegal for chile grown outside the valley to be labeled as “Hatch” chile.

Green Chile Cheeseburgers have to be one of the most popular ways to eat green chile in New Mexico; you can order them at any Mcdonald’s, and they’re always featured in those “burgers around the USA” specials on TV and various other blogs.

An Excellent Hatch Chile Recipe

Cheeseburger soup has been a smash hit recipe floating around the internet for the last few years. Since it’s the dead of winter right now and hot soup sounds amazing, I thought I’d create a knock-your-socks-off delicious Hatch Green Chile Cheeseburger Soup full of authentic roasted Hatch Green Chile!

I did not roast the chile myself this time but instead chose to order frozen roasted chile online from The Hatch Chile Store. They ship whole fresh chiles (when in season) or frozen chiles to your door in just a couple of days! It’s a truly amazing service that will deliver REAL Hatch chile to your door. When you make Hatch Green Chile Cheeseburger Soup, you will want to use real Hatch Chile. The flavor is just unbeatable!

My personal favorite product from The Hatch Chile Store is a mix of roasted red AND green mild chile because it gives my recipes an extra depth of flavor and the colors are beautiful too! It’s the chile I used in these photos and I would recommend it to anyone, sponsored or not sponsored. It is an excellent product and I love love, love the taste.

I have a wonderful how-to guide all about roasting green chile peppers at home if you’re a DIY type of person.

In New Mexico, folks use roasted green chile in hundreds of recipes, ranging from Green Chile Apple Pie to Green Chile ice cream. Arguably the most popular way to eat it is stuffed into a cheeseburger. (Okay, so that’s my favorite way anyway…) So if you don’t have a grill handy, just make Hatch Green Chile Cheeseburger Soup instead!

Should I use processed cheese or real cheese when making cheesy soup?

After taste-testing multiple variants of the ‘Cheeseburger soup recipe’ that I found on the web, it was clear that freshly grated cheddar cheese works best with all cheesy soups and in turn, was perfect for my new Hatch Green Chile Cheeseburger Soup.

Freshly grated cheddar cheese melted into the soup base smoothly and gave it a lovely cheesy tang- the perfect complement to the savory beef, smoky bacon, and a bite of green chile. The processed cheese (you know, the kind that comes in a yellow box and rimes with ‘Rita’), did melt in smoothly but the taste was simply overpowering. All I tasted was processed cheese in every bite.

How to make One-Pot Hatch Green Chile Cheeseburger Soup

All the cheeseburger soup recipes that I found used multiple pots and pans to create the final product. Hello! It’s 2021 and people want one-pot meals (at least I do), so I streamlined this recipe to be made entirely in one pot and boosted the flavor as well. Your welcome hehe ;0)

The first step is to (of course) prep your ingredients! I can’t harp on this enough. You will enjoy the process of cooking something wonderful when you’re not stressing over ingredient prep during cooking!

Step one: We’ll start to build flavor in this pot by browning the ground beef first. Remove it and drain the beef fat. The reason we need to set it aside, for now, is that it would become bland and tough if it was left in the pot to simmer with the other ingredients.

Step two: Now brown chopped bacon into crispy bits in your pot. Remove the bacon and set it aside on some paper towels. This will be our garnish to sprinkle over the top of the soup. Leave two tablespoons of bacon grease in the pot and remove any excess.

Step three: we add our vegetables to the bacon grease and sauté until soft. Okay, at this point I bet you’re thinking, “I never put celery, carrot, or potato on my cheeseburgers!” And rightly so. But this is a soup; these vegetables totally belong there and will all taste perfectly delicious in the end. Trust me.

See the brown bits of food stuck to the bottom (or ‘fond’ as the French like to call it)? That is glorious flavor my friends, and we will take full advantage of it by incorporating it into our soup.

Step four: Add garlic, Worcestershire sauce, and a dash of liquid smoke. This step right here is what gives this soup a real cheeseburger taste! Then slowly add broth to the pot and scrape up all the brown bits off the bottom. Then stir in the milk and potatoes. Simmer the potatoes until soft.

Step five: Stir in the grated cheese, reserved hamburger, and roasted green chile until smooth. Dish up and sprinkle each bowl with bacon. Enjoy all the flavors of a green chile cheeseburger in a soup!

NOTE: This cheeseburger soup recipe can be made in a crockpot as well. Instructions are in the recipe notes below.

I have to share, I LOVED opening my box of chile when it arrived from The Hatch Chile Store! The box came with special insulation and a block of dry ice to keep all the chile packets nicely frozen. I saved myself a ton of work (and time) by ordering my authentic Hatch Chile online, and you should too! AND since they offer so many options, I purchased MY perfect chile. It tastes just as if I had roasted it yesterday myself. Fresh and delicious!

And just a reminder in case you missed it the first time, use the promo code goldilockskitchen10% for 10% off any purchase from The Hatch Chile Store! This is a limited-time offer, so act fast!

Did you know I have a full-color cookbook with lots more easy and delicious New Mexican recipes? You can learn more about it here!

I hope you find joy in making this recipe and please give me a shoutout if you post a pic of the recipe on social! Follow me on Instagram @TheGoldilocksKitchen, Facebook page The Goldilocks Kitchen, or Pinterest @GoldilocksKitch. Don’t forget to rate the recipe and leave a comment- I want to hear your feedback! (This is a blog after all and that’s the whole point right?!)

Hatch Green Chile Cheeseburger Soup

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5 from 1 review

• Author: Emily
• Total Time: 55 minutes
• Yield: 8–10 servings 1x

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Description

Fire-roasted Hatch Green chile is the star of this cheeseburger soup recipe! Crisp bacon, ground beef, onion, celery, carrots, potatoes, and silky cheddar cheese round out the flavors of this New Mexico classic cheeseburger- now in a hearty soup. 

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Ingredients

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• 1/2 pound lean ground beef
• 5 slices of bacon, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2 celery stalks, diced
• 2 carrots, peeled and sliced thin
• pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• dash of liquid smoke
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 2 and 1/2 cups chicken broth or prepared bullion cubes
• 2 cups of milk
• 2 medium-size russet potatoes, peeled and chopped 
• 1/2 cup of thawed The Hatch Chile Store fire-roasted chopped green chile (or more to taste)
• 1 and 1/2 cups freshly-grated cheddar cheese
• optional garnishes of minced fresh parsley or minced chives

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Instructions

1. Brown ground beef in a large stove-top Dutch oven (or a 4-quart stockpot) over medium-high heat until no pink spots remain, about 5-7 minutes. Turn the heat off. Using a slotted spoon, remove beef and place into a clean bowl. Drain beef fat or soak it up with paper towels.
2. Return the pot to medium heat and add the bacon. Stir and cook until the bacon is crispy, about 8 minutes. Transfer to a paper-towel-lined bowl or plate. Drain excess bacon grease, leaving about two tablespoons of bacon grease in the pot.
3. Place onion, carrot, celery, Worchestershire sauce, and a dash of liquid smoke into the pot and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring up the browned bits of bacon from the bottom until the onion is soft and brown, about 3-4 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook for about 30 seconds, then sprinkle in the flour and stir for about a minute.
4. Slowly stir in the chicken broth, milk, and potatoes, scraping any browned bits off the bottom. Increase the heat to medium-high and bring to a boil, stirring often. Cover with the lid slightly ajar and gently simmer on medium-low for about 15 minutes or until the potatoes are soft.
5. Remove the lid and stir in the ground beef, The Hatch Chile Store Roasted Chopped Green Chile, and cheddar cheese until melted and smooth. Serve, sprinkling individual bowls with bacon and optional fresh herbs.

Notes

This Hatch Green Chile Cheeseburger soup can also be made in a crockpot. Brown beef and bacon separately, then place all ingredients except cheese, beef, and bacon into the crockpot. Cook on low until potatoes are soft, then stir these last three ingredients in after cooking and serve.

I recommend freshly grated cheese from a block in this soup because it will melt much better than pre-packaged shredded cheese from the grocery store. Velveeta cheese can be substituted (12 ounces) if you wish but I found through recipe testing that the ‘Velveeta’ taste overpowers the other wonderful flavors in this soup.

Soup keeps well in the refrigerator for three days. 

• Prep Time: 20 minutes
• Cook Time: 35 minutes
• Category: Dinner
• Method: stovetop
• Cuisine: Southwestern American

Nutrition

• Serving Size: about 1 cup
• Calories: 308
• Sugar: 5.5
• Sodium: 717
• Fat: 15.6
• Saturated Fat: 7.7
• Carbohydrates: 18.1
• Fiber: 2.2
• Protein: 23.5
• Cholesterol: 66