Red Enchilada Sauce

It's a good recipe but according to my tía in Mexico, you need to use chicken stock/broth instead of water and use only two cups to steep the dried chilies instead of four cups (you can add more later, if needed). And the last step, where you "shock" the puree, be sure to have the oil good and hot so that when the puree hits the oil, it produces the needed "shock". Also, I would suggest using three to five arbol chilies.

Remember to let the sauce cool before you puree it in your blender

This is an easy-to-follow recipe. I made it for El Cholo’s Sonora-Style Enchiladas mentioned above but this is a good red sauce that can be used on other dishes. I substituted New Mexico (Hatch) chiles for the California/Anaheim chiles, otherwise followed the recipe as written. I'll make this again.

Living in France limits accessibility to dried chili's. I used what I had, NM chili's, Arbero's and one other that I put in a jar and didn't mark them. I thought there was too much water in the original batch so I made two more batches using very little water and adding everything together. I have a beautiful textured, super flavourful sauce that I'm very happy with. Enchiladas tonight!

Dried chili pods, cleaned and seeds/veins removed. Water, salt, garlic. Put in blender and run thru a colander into a skillet that has a teaspoon of oil and tablespoon of flour. Make your gravy and that's it. Most people in our family eat a fried egg on top, however I do not.

I made this as written. Like others, I found it to be thin and lacking flavor. So I added 2T tomato paste, chili powder and some oregano and cumin. Then I continued cooking until it reduced to 1.25 cups. The flavor and texture were then spot on.

I forgot to add. Don't use so much water. Two cups are enough, and one cup should be drained off and set aside after the chiles cook. If more liquid is needed, add the drained water to meet your desires. I also use 3 to 5 of each chile type. This recipe doesn't use enough chile for that amount of water. I also don't use any onions in the sauce but used chopped onions to top the enchiladas as desired.

Straining the puree results in a smooth sauce and is less tedious than trying to de-skin the reconstituted dried chiles. This recipe reflects how red chile sauce is made in Mexico. Unfortunately, I have seen many red sauce recipes on youtube so far from the Mexican traditional sauce that I gagged just watching.

I ended up with a tasteless, watery sauce with some kick to it. No depth of flavors. Where does it say to make a roux to thicken it? Where did I go wrong? Tomorrow using another recipe we are going to try to rescue this one.

Agree the sauce was thin and not full of flavor. That being said, it was compelling, and I ended up putting some in a small pitcher on the table to add to the plate as I ate. Kept coming back for more. I used 5 CA chilis and one chili de arbol. Skins and all went into the Vitamix and a smooth sauce was the result.

This sauce dried chile sauce needs some help. First, make sure you VENT the blender, or you will have the sauce on the ceiling. Boiling onions and garlic is sort of odd, the results are bland. Experiment at Step 3, use bacon grease for the oil, add tomato paste, cumin, paprika, other pepper powder, a tiny bit of Mexican or other chocolate to make mole, corn starch to thicken. This wants to be good and rewards ad hoc additions. There are similar recipes on NYT for inspiration.

A food mill is useful to remove any remaining chile seeds and skins. This recipe is similar to one I learned from Susana Trilling in Oaxaca, except she toasts the chiles and onion first. But if I were making gallons at a time in a restaurant maybe I wouldn't toast them either.

Disappointing. Very (very) thin, not much flavor. To doctor it we a) reduced it, b) used (homemade) chile oil (instead of plain), added ground dried tomato and a pinch of (homemade) chile powder. Better. Will not use this recipe (as written) again.

"California" chilies are actually just ripe, dried Anaheim chilies.