The Joy of Making Your Own Enchilada Sauce: A Personal and Expressive Tradition
Making your own enchilada sauce is a labor of love that requires patience, attention to detail, and a willingness to experiment. It's a process that's steeped in tradition and personal expression, much like our favorite family recipes. As the chef puts it, "We've all got grandma's recipes and our own little tweaks." This sauce is no exception, with each batch telling its own story of flavor and technique.
One of the most fascinating aspects of making enchilada sauce is the subjective nature of the process. While some ingredients are non-negotiable – like semi-sweet chocolate in Claudette Zepeda's recipe – others can be adjusted to suit one's taste. The chef notes that the only variable that truly matters is deciding how much water to add, as this determines the sauce's consistency and overall flavor. Start with a few pulses, then switch to a constant low speed, followed by a quick blast at maximum speed to obliterate all solids. The result should be a thick, but not gloopy, sauce.
But it's the final step – straining the sauce through a fine-mesh sieve or cheesecloth – that sets this sauce apart from others. As the chef explains, "If you push the sauce through a strainer, you filter out any chunks of skin, seeds, or pulp." This results in a beautifully smooth and refined sauce that's worth savoring.
The beauty of making your own enchilada sauce lies in its versatility and potential to elevate traditional Mexican recipes. The chef notes that this recipe is the "mission-critical ingredient" needed for many authentic dishes, from tamales to pozole. And yet, the process can seem daunting – after all, it makes a whole pitcher full! But fear not; portioning the sauce into individual freezer bags and storing them in the freezer for up to a year ensures that you'll always have this precious ingredient on hand.
As the chef puts it, "If I called for this whole process as the first step in making some other recipe, most viewers would never make it." But with practice and patience, anyone can master the art of making their own enchilada sauce. And trust us – it's worth the effort. Take the humble tortilla, for example, dipped into the rich and chile-forward sauce and filled with shredded rotisserie chicken and melting cheese. These are truly transcendent.
Of course, for those who prefer a heartier sauce, there's always the option to braise pork shoulder or beef chuck in a pot full of red chile sauce. The result is nothing short of culinary magic – a tender, fall-apart meat dish infused with deep, rich flavors that'll leave you craving more.
The word "adobada" – remember how we talked about it earlier? It's all coming together now. This sauce is the foundation upon which traditional adobada recipes are built. And if you want to take your Mexican cooking to the next level, mastering this technique is the key. So why not give it a try this holiday season? With practice and patience, you'll be whipping up perfectly seasoned enchiladas and tamales in no time.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enFrench cuisine has five mother sauces. If you can master these five sauces on which just about everything else is based, you’ll be on your way to mastering the dishes of that region. But if Mexican food had mother sauces, this would indisputably be one of them. For the purposes of this video, let’s call it “red chile sauce”, because the exact specific name someone else might call it is tricky. Technically, it is a salsa (since salsa is just spanish for “sauce”) , but “chile colorado” might be more accurate, since it’s made of chiles and the color red. Calling it “enchilada sauce” would be like calling Mayonaisse “BLT spread”-- true, but detrimentally specific. If you use vinegar in your version of this sauce, then it becomes adobo, and adobo is one of those words like “curry” that’s so varied across so many differentcultures that it starts to mean nothing if you think about it too long. But if we can put all the naming details aside and just call it red chile sauce, I‘d rather show you how to make it.I start with around 10 dried guajillo peppers, and about 5 dried anchos. Peppers are all different shapes and sizes so I weighed mine and wouldn’t you know it, they both came out to about 2 ounces each. I also add a third spicy chile called pequin. These can be hard to find, so you could use two chiles de arbol, you could probably get away with a spoonful of generic crushed red chile flake, or just leave the third element out completely. By the way, this is another good use for any chipotle peppers leftover from making tinga, but now I’m riffing to your detriment so I’ll try to stay on track. The guajillos are the backbone, bringing that signature red color, the anchos are there for raisiny sweetness, and the third optional pepper is just there for spice. If you wanted a sort of minimum viable product, you could use nothing but guajillos as long as the weight totals 4 ounces. Assuming you successfully acquired the goods, here’s the technique. If you’ve ever used the phrase “no sticks, no stems, no seeds”, you’ll find this very familiar. Rip the stems off each pepper and throw them out. Tear the chiles open and scrape out the seeds. These have the physical properties of all the dried fruits you’ve worked with before: brittle and hard to work with if they’re old and stale, but flexible and easier to tear open if fresh. Don’t drive yourself crazy trying to hundred-percent this game. you do not have to remove every single seed, but you shouldn’t just skip this step. This part is not negotiable. But THIS part is negotiable... I toast the peppers in a dry pan over medium-high heat for 90 seconds while stirring and flipping. It is an extra step, but it makes them more pliable and awakens those deep, roasty, almost chocolatey flavors. You should be aware that these can burn very easily without changing color, so you’ve gotta use your nose. As soon as you smell chile in the air, cut the heat. Again, you don’t have to toast them if you don’t want to. But you do have to soften them. If you don’t soak these in hot water, they won’t blend properly. Put boiling hot water into a pot or a bowl and let the chiles soak in it for, let’s say… ten to fifteen minutes. Those are hands-off minutes. There’s nothing to do during this time. So what I do is crank a grill or a dry pan to medium-high and char half a large onion plus 4 or 5 garlic cloves with the skins still on for burn protection. This is supposed to be a chile sauce above all, but I like charred allium flavor. That’s the beauty of making red chile sauce. Every household, every bloodline, they all have their own story to tell. We’ve all got our grandma’s recipes and our own little tweaks. I’ve seen recipes with a little bit of semi-sweet chocolate in it. I remember seeing Claudette Zepeda add kombu and bonito flakes to hers as a reference to her time growing up in Japan. This sauce is so expressive and personal how could you not adore it? Ope. 10 minutes are up. All that’s left now is to place the chile peppers into the blender along with my charred half onion, the roasted garlic cloves which I squeezed out of the paper, a teaspoon of kosher salt, a teaspoon of mexican oregano, and a teaspoon of ground cumin. The only subjective variable is deciding is how much water to add. You need at least enough to get things to blend into a liquid. Start with a few pulses, then a constant low speed, then crank it up to max so you obliterate all the solids. The sauce will be thick, but it shouldn't be gloopy. The french would call it “nappe”. Just thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. If yours looks more like pancake batter, use the chile infused soaking water to thin it out, a little bit at a time. I ended up using 3 cups for this one. This is the last step, and it is optional, but I do it every time. If you push the sauce through a strainer, you filter out any chunks of skin, seeds, or pulp. The perfectly smooth sauce that you get after straining looks nice and refined. Just taste it for saltand you’re done. That wasn’t so bad, was it? If I called for this whole process as the first step in making some other recipe, most viewers would never make it. But if you can become the kind of person who always has this in their freezer, you start to see it as the mission-critical ingredient you need for many traditional Mexican recipes. I know someone’s watching this thinking “ok I might try it, but good God this recipe makes a whole pitcher full? That’s quite the commitment for something I might not use very often. But I must encourage you to make a big blender’s worth. You can portion it out into sized freezer bags and keep it for at least a year. If you did that, say goodbye to ever buying canned enchilada sauce. Dark, rich, and chile-forward, this is your new enchilada sauce. Look, I’ll dip two corn tortillas in the sauce, fill each one with shredded rotisserie chicken and melting cheese, fold em in half, and pan fry each side. These are way better than those made from canned sauce, whether you make em this way or in the contemporary rolled preparation.Still not sold? Okay, you could… braise one inch chunks of pork shoulder in a pot full of red chile sauce, which would reduce into chile colorado. or you could braise one inch chunks of beef chuck in a three cups of chile sauce plus someapple cider vinegar... Then you'd be rocking with carne adobada. The word “adobada” comes from “adobo” remember talking about that earlier? It’s all coming together now. And you know the red sauce inside shredded pork tamales? That's this stuff. Also, making this sauce is the first step in making pozole. I’ll link some inspiration for you to make all these recipes in the description, but they all hinge on perfecting this sauce, so if there was ever a time to learn a technique that enables tamales and pozole, the Christmas season is THE time. Andale pues, ya.\n"
