Serious Eats: Recipes
Dinner Tonight: Chile Colorado
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.