Dinner Tonight: Chile Colorado

Dinner Tonight

Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, February 11, 2008 at 4:00 PM

I’ve been dreaming about enchiladas recently. I’m not sure where the hankering came from, but it certainly wasn’t helped after I had some spectacularly bad ones at a local Tex-Mex outlet. I decided to tackle them myself. There is no standard sauce, and some can get very complicated. When I found this basic red sauce that contained six ingredients and could be done in less than 20 minutes, I gave it a shot. To my amazement, there’s not a tomato to be found in it. Shows how much I know about enchiladas.

All that color actually comes from the chili powder. It couldn’t be further away from the red sauce dripping off most cheese laden enchiladas. That’s mostly a good thing. Instead of sweet and sticky, it’s savory and rich. But it also is a little pungent and overpowering. Perhaps that’s just my surprised taste buds encountering the real deal for the first time. I snatched most of the recipe from Viva New Mexico, but also added some thoughts from Saveur’s Mrs. Sanchez’s Red Chile Sauce. Most noticeably, I added real garlic instead of garlic powder. The sauce is supposed to be excellent on burritos and beans, but I just had it with some basic enchiladas. There is a very easy enchilada recipe in Rick Bayless's Mexican Everyday.

Chile Colorado (Basic Red Chile Sauce)

- makes 2-3 servings -

Ingredients

2 tablespoons canola oil (or lard)
2 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons red chile powder
2 cups cold water
1 clove garlic, minced
Salt

Procedure

1. Heat the oil over medium in a sauce pan. Whisk in the flour, until it has darkened slightly, about 1 minute.

2. Add the red chile powder and garlic, stir until combined and then let cook for 1 minute.

3. Pour in the water slowly, whisking constantly to avoid lumps.

4. Season with salt, simmer the sauce on low for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3 Comments | Tags: Dinner Tonight, sauces, spicy, Tex-Mex

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3 Comments:

This is a good recipe, but I would add a bit of cumin and bit of ground coriander, as well as some grated onion -not a lot, about 2 T. I also use chicken broth instead of water in my chile colorado.

dksbook at 4:52PM on 02/11/08

I agree dksbook. This recipe probably tastes good--but I would prefer more of a tex-mex flavour with cumin, and more onions.

hungrychristel at 3:04PM on 02/12/08

Both of your comments are probably right on. This is definitely the base, and then all kinds of different things could be added to develop the flavor. Chicken stock, especially, sounds like a perfect addition.

Pauper Nick at 4:20PM on 02/12/08

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