3 super easy Mexican sauces for any occasion

I think you know by now that we Mexicans love our food spicy. Even if we don’t enjoy spicy things as a child, like myself, you develop a taste for it. Soon you start to feel like food doesn’t taste as good, or has any flavor at all, unless it makes you cry of how hot it is.

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There are TONS of ways to prepare sauce. In fact, you can even write a book about it. And there are sauces for everyone, from the ones that prefer the pepper flavor without the heat, the sweet tooths and the hardcore-take-me-to-the-emergency-room-this-is-too-hot ones.

Here are three VERY simple and tasteful recipes for sauces. Moreover, I can assure you that they will satisfy the need of all kinds of people. So let’s start with the simplest and fastest one to prepare!

1. Mexican raw sauce

This is an extremely fool-proof sauce. It consists purely in using the trifecta of Mexican cuisine: tomatoes, serrano peppers, and onion. It is also a base sauce that you can develop further to your liking and needs. You can, once it’s done, add some cilantro, diced avocado or more diced peppers. It requires no cooking at all and will take you literally minutes to make. This is a popular sauce when we are in an extreme hurry and need to get ourselves some flavor for that quick meal or breakfast (this is a popular sauce to put on top of eggs in the morning).

You’ll need:

Depending on the tomatoes and if you add a little water, it makes a lot of sauce. Mine ended up being about 3 cups.

• Serrano peppers (depending on how much sauce and how hot you want it, play with it, as this is a raw sauce, you can put it in the blender as much as you need to get the perfect hotness for you).
• Tomatoes. They will add most of the watery consistency of the sauce.
• Onion. I used a quarter of a medium size onion, you can add more later if you want, chopped.

Instructions:

• Dice everything up in a non-perfect way, just to make it easier for the blender.
• Blend everything, I prefer this sauce a little chunky so I didn’t blend it long.
• Add salt to your liking.
• Serve.

That’s literally all to it. It’s a great simple sauce that, as I mentioned before, can be a base sauce that you can add more stuff to.

2. Güerito pepper and lemon Mexican sauce

This one is my husband’s favorite. I even had to threaten him in order for him to stop eating it before I could take a few pictures of this sauce.

This is a PERFECT Mexican sauce for seafood or just as a dip. It is not hot but it is very very tasty because the lemon makes wonders to it. Plus, the broiling of the peppers gives it another level of tastefulness that makes this sauce irresistible. Believe me!

You’ll need:

Makes about half a cup.

• Güerito peppers (the yellow ones about the size of a jalapeño pepper)
• The juice of about 10 lemons. Keep in mind that we Mexicans call lemon what most English-speaking countries know as limes. I’m talking about the green ones, so there’s no chance at all of any mistake.
• Salt to taste.

Instructions

• Put the peppers in a hot pan over high heat and broil them just like we usually do with peppers, as you can see in our Chiles Rellenos recipe.
• Once the peppers have black skin, put them in a plastic bag for a minute, let them “sweat”.
• Peel the skin off the peppers, be careful not to burn your hands. It’s OK if you leave some skin, it doesn’t have to be perfect.
• Put the peppers in the blender and add the lemon juice.
• Wait until the end to add the salt as mine didn’t need any but it all depends on your own liking.
• Blend everything with the pulse option, leave it a little chunky.
• Serve and enjoy!

This is a highly addictive sauce, so have some totopos close. My husband finished it all in a matter of minutes with chips.

3. Chile de Arbol Mexican sauce

Now, this is not for the light-hearted. This is a majorly hot sauce. It’s ridiculously hot as it is easy to make but it does require some finesse and attention to detail. This is for the brave ones, we eat it with chips too, or on top of practically anything. We end up crying but it’s all worth it.

You’ll need:

• Chile de Arbol. It’s a small red dry pepper that’s extremely hot. I used half a handful.
• A clove of garlic.
• Half a tomato (for juice, it doesn’t add any flavor).
• Olive oil.
• Salt to taste.

Instructions:

This will make about a quarter of a cup.

• Have the clove of garlic peeled and tomato sliced BEFORE anything else.
• Put some olive oil in a medium to low heat pan. Wait for it to get hot.
• Once it’s hot, have a wooden spoon in your hand and the peppers in the other.
• Now, this is where it gets tricky. This sauce is very easy to make BUT it’s also very easy to mess up! The key is to keep moving the peppers and pay close attention.
• Add the peppers and start moving them around, immediately after, add the clove of garlic.
• Move the peppers and garlic around, non-stop, low heat. Pay attention to the noise that comes from the pepper, the color, the smell, but most importantly, make sure no smoke comes out the peppers.
• Move it around, depending on how much peppers you put, this will take a few minutes. Since I did a very small batch and my pan was large, this literally took me 2 minutes, maybe 3, tops.
• At the smallest sign of smoke coming from the peppers take them off the heat and into the blender ASAP!
• Once the peppers and garlic are in the blender, add the tomato and salt and blend until you get a relatively homogeneous mix.

Final Notes

If you get this right, you will notice something interesting: it smells like peanuts! This is from the peppers. When people mess up this sauce, they usually add peanuts to make for it. Some people add the peanuts because they like it that way, even if the sauce came out perfectly.

And you’ll also notice that you’re sneezing and probably have watery eyes. But that’s normal. Because that means the devil himself has come to your kitchen through the spiciness of the sauce.

Eat this sauce VERY carefully. Please.

And there you have it! I really hope these sauces please you. Let me know which one was your favorite and what do you use them for!

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