Green Chile Zucchini Bread with Strawberry Butter

Looking for a unique way to use up your green chile? This green chile zucchini bread is topped with homemade strawberry butter is sweet and spicy, crunchy & creamy, and full of perfect textures…or it’s awesome all on its own.

I love watching Chopped on Food Network, and I always joke with my husband that I would rock that show (I’m all talk, don’t worry). So when a friend put out a call for a Chopped-inspired challenge, I couldn’t resist.

I love being in the kitchen and I love trying new recipes, but I honestly wasn’t prepared for the ingredients I saw in my “basket.”

My group got the ingredients: zucchini, green chile, heavy cream, and strawberries.

If you know me at all then you know I was jumping for joy with green chile being on the list, but the other ones? How in the world was I supposed to make all four of those work together in perfect harmony?

To be honest, I came up with about a dozen really bad ideas…and then it clicked and the ingredients all fell into place: Green Chile Zucchini Bread with a Made-From-Scratch Strawberry Butter to put on top.

Holy yum, batman.

Creating the Recipe

I used my grandma’s zucchini bread recipe—because you can’t go wrong when it’s from grandma—and I threw in about a couple of tablespoons of hot roasted green chile, and a couple handfuls of pecans from my husband’s grandma’s pecan trees.

Basically, this green chile zucchini bread is filled with history, love, and deliciousness.

The bread is sweet and spicy, crunchy and fluffy, and so full of flavor and a combo of perfect textures. Plus, it has vegetables in it, so it’s healthy, right?

For the next part of this challenge I actually got a little workout in, because I made the butter from scratch.

Yup, you read that right! I filled an empty baby food jar up half way with heavy cream and after a little shaking (okay, a lot of shaking), my cream went from a liquid to whipped cream. Then, after a lot more shaking, it eventually turned into creamy smooth butter!

I smashed up a strawberry, added a pinch of salt, and mixed it all together.

The result of slathering a little of the strawberry butter on top of the green chile zucchini bread is like a match made in heaven.

Everything works so well together, and we can’t stop eating it!

Green Chile Zucchini Bread with Strawberry Butter

Let’s Chat About Green Chile

A quick note about using green chile in this bread: While I highly recommend using fresh green chile, you can use canned or jarred. Our personal preference is jarred green chile. We’ve used (and liked) 505 Southwestern and Zia Hatch Chile Company. Truthfully, canned green chile always tastes too manufactured for us. But the two jarred kinds mentioned above tastes as fresh as you can get without actually peeling it yourself. Just make sure you drain this as much as you can before using it.

Would you ever try something like this (either the Chopped challenge, putting green chile in your sweet bread, or making your own butter)? I’m so, so happy I attempted this, because I’m seriously in love with this bread and butter combo.