Technically, there is no real chile variety known as "Hatch". Hatch is a small town between Albuquerque and Las Cruces that is famous for green chile growing and has a yearly Chile Festival. If you bought chile seeds labeled as "Hatch" variety, it may have been a variety called AgCo Fire Green which are labeled as "hot Hatch green chile" sold here in NM. There are a lot of other varieties commonly grown in this area, though, such as NuMex Heritage 6-4, Big Jim, Barker X-Hot, Joe Parker, and Sandia to name a few, with varying flavors and heat levels. Then there are some northern NM varieties such as Chimayo and Espanola. These are just the varieties I am growing this year. Big Jim is a good mild to medium variety that you can use in your recipes calling for roasted green chile and it makes great rellenos.

So I guess to answer your question, yes, there is a big difference in taste and heat level between the varieties, but Big Jim should give you what you need unless you want more heat. Enjoy :). There is no better smell in the world than roasting green chile :)

Emily

Thanks It all makes sense now.

If you go to the Chile Institute website which is run by new mexico state university, you can learn alot about the different varieties of NuMexico type peppers, as well as order seeds from them at a reasonable price.

The whole thing with hatch chiles is the dirt they grow in and the roasting after.