Fruit 40 min
Homemade chamoy
The dark red sauce on Mexican fruit and micheladas. Made from dried apricot and prune, it is sweet, sour, salty and hot in the same spoonful.
Medium
Written in Mexico
You bought the dried chiles.
Now here is what to do with them.
A reference for 21 Mexican chiles — real heat, real flavor, honest substitutes — plus the salsas they actually go into. By someone who buys these chiles weekly, not someone who read about them.
Why another site about Mexican chiles
The numbers agree with each other
Search any chile and you will find three sites giving three heat ranges, and at least one claiming mulato is hotter than guajillo. It is not. Every figure here comes from one table used across the whole site.
Substitutes that admit the cost
11 chiles with real ratios — not a lazy 1:1 — and a sentence on what you lose with each swap. Plus which ones you can actually find in a US store.
Regional, not generic
Salsas with a home state: xnipec from Yucatán, macha from Veracruz, chintextle from Oaxaca. Written where they are eaten.
Where to start
The salsas worth learning first, with US measurements and notes on where to buy what they need.
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- Green 25 min
Charred green salsa (salsa verde tatemada)
Tomatillos and chiles blackened on a dry pan, not boiled. Smokier, deeper and thicker than any other green salsa.
Hot - Creamy 18 min
Creamy avocado salsa (the taqueria green sauce)
The smooth green sauce taquerias squeeze over tacos. No cream and no dairy in it at all — the texture comes from avocado and boiled tomatillo.
Medium - Guacamole 12 min
Real guacamole
Four ingredients crushed by hand, with chunks and not purée. No sour cream, no mayonnaise, no cumin, and no, the pit does not stop it browning.
Medium - Red 30 min
Guajillo salsa
The mild red salsa that goes with everything. Deep red, barely hot, and it keeps ten days — the one to make if you are cooking for people who do not want heat.
Mild - Fruit 15 min
Mango habanero salsa
Sweet, sharp and genuinely hot. Built around the habanero's floral aroma rather than just its burn, with cucumber for crunch.
Hot
Publicidad
Salsa families
Grouped by technique, not by color — because boiling tomatillos and confiting chiles in oil are different jobs with different results.
- Green salsas Everything built on tomatillos: raw, boiled, charred or crushed in a molcajete. The everyday salsa in most Mexican kitchens.
- Red salsas From fresh tomatoes or from rehydrated dried chiles. This is where taqueria salsa lives, and where dried chiles do their real work.
- Salsa macha and chile oils Dried chiles and seeds confited in oil. No water, so it keeps for months on the shelf. Mexico had chili crisp first.
- Creamy salsas Avocado, crema, cheese or ground seeds. They tame the heat without flattening the flavor, and several contain no dairy at all.
- Guacamole The real one is four ingredients crushed by hand. No sour cream, no mayonnaise, no cumin.
- Pickles and quick-cured salsas Chiles and vegetables in vinegar, onions cured in lime. The only family here that gets better after a few days in the jar.
- Fruit salsas Mango, tamarind, pineapple and chamoy: the Mexican balance of sweet, sour, salty and hot in one bite.
- Regional salsas Salsas with a last name and a home state: xnipec from Yucatan, chintextle from Oaxaca, borracha from the central highlands.