Homemade Mexican Red Chili Sauce

If you make enchiladas, tamales, or any Mexican or Tex-Mex style dish that requiresred chili sauce, I urge you to bypass the cannedstuff and make your own sauce from scratch.
It goes together very quickly, with just a couple of ingredients and is far tastier than canned, plus you can adjust the level ofheat according the the chilies you use.
(Most well stocked grocery storescarry dried peppers in the Mexican food/ingredient section.)
The method is much easier than you might imagine:
- Simply rinse the peppers, remove the seedsand stems (discard.)  - Lightly toast the peppers in a dry skillet to bring out their flavor.
- Remove from skillet and place in a small sauce pot withwater, bring to a boil and remove from heat. Allow to soak for 10 minutes.
- Puree the softened pepper in a blender with some of thesoaking water (or plain water if the soaking water seemsbitter)
- Add 1 large clove of garlic, 2 whole cloves, 2 pepper corns,1 or 2 teaspoons dried Mexican oregano, and salt. Continue to blend until sauce is smooth.
- Pour the sauce through a sieve into a skillet, add atablespoon of vegetable oil. Stir and simmer over mediumheat for about 10 minutes.  Taste for seasonings.
Use immediately in your favorite recipe or cool andstore in a glass container then refrigerate or freeze.





Elise, over at Simply Recipes has a wonderfulstep-by-step pictorial, with the type of chilies toselect as well as the recipe.
Next up,  I'll show you one of my favorite ways ofusing this Red Chili Sauce.

Thank you for stopping by, and for any comments youwould care to share!  Have a wonderful week.

xo ~mari  :o)

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