Enchilada Sauce

Alert: this recipe is not one of my quick recipes made under 30 min. This sauce is made from scratch so takes about total of 1-1.5 hours to make. You can make it in bulk and freeze for when you make enchiladas again!

Enchilada sauce is the heart of Enchiladas. The time and effort to make this sauce from scratch is well worth it when you taste it. My family simply loves this sauce and we sometimes add it to pasta as well :). One thing that can make your enchiladas good is the sauce. I will share the recipe for how I prepare beans for my enchiladas in another post.

Enchilada Sauce Recipe

Serving: 4 | Cook Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

1 28oz can of Tomatoes, crushed or puree

2 roasted red peppers (I usually roast on stove right before making the sauce) You can also use jarred roasted red peppers

5-6 whole red chilies

5-6 cloves of garlic

1/3 cup water (to soak red chilies)

1/2 cup water (to add to the sauce)

Taco seasoning - 4 tsp (I use Trader Joe's TS)

Cumin Powder - 1 tsp

Salt per taste (~2 tsp)

1 tsp red chili powder

Directions:

On a iron skillet or a regular pan, roast red chili until it becomes aromatic and it turns the color to brown/black. Turn off the gas.

Soak the red chili in 1/3 cup water along with garlic cloves for 20-30min. You can soak this in your blender jar.

Roast red peppers on stove and put on side. Peel off the skin once cooled. Cut into pieces.

Add roasted red pepper pieces in the blender jar and blend.

If you are using crushed tomato instead of puree, blend that too.

transfer everything in a sauce pan and simmer on low/medium flame.

Add all other spices (Taco seasoning, cumin powder and salt)

Simmer for at least 20 min on low flame and adjust spices as needed.

Sauce is ready for enchiladas!