Chipotle meco: smoke taken to the extreme

Three chiles are the same chile — ripe smoked jalapeño — and the meco is the extreme end of the three. Where the morita hints at smoke, the meco announces it.

It hangs over a wood fire far longer than a morita, and what comes out is large, brittle, an ashy grey-brown, with skin so wrinkled it feels like cardboard. Open the bag and the smell fills the kitchen.

Meco, morita and canned chipotle

	Looks like	Smoke	Best for
Morita	Small, wine-red, flexible	Gentle, fruity, prune	Table salsas
Meco	Large, grey-brown, brittle	Heavy, close to ash	Adobos, grilling, stews
Canned in adobo	In thick sauce	Smoke plus vinegar and sugar	Creamy sauces, dressings

They are not one-for-one. If a recipe calls for meco and you have morita, use double. The other way round, use half. Getting this wrong is the single most common problem people have with chipotle.

How hot it is

5,000 to 10,000 Scoville — the same range as morita, comparable to a hot jalapeño and well under a serrano.

What makes it feel intense is not heat but smoke. Eight mecos in a cup and a half of salsa give moderate heat and a smoke that dominates everything else in the bowl.

Its soaking water usually needs throwing out

This is the most useful thing to know about this chile.

With most dried chiles, the soaking water is a gift — sweet, tinted, carrying more flavor than any stock you might substitute. With the meco it often is not. Its long smoking leaves phenolic compounds that dissolve into the water and frequently turn it bitter.

This is the one chile where discarding the soaking water is the norm rather than the exception. Taste it with a spoon before you commit. If it tastes of sweet smoke, use it. If it scrapes, blend with clean water.

Sweeten it — that part is not optional

In a morita salsa, a teaspoon of piloncillo is an improvement. Here it is structural.

The meco carries a clear natural bitterness, inherited from its long smoking, and without something sweet the salsa comes out harsh. A tablespoon of grated piloncillo — or dark brown sugar — in a cup and a half does not read as sweet at all. What it does is lift the smoky notes forward and round off that bitterness.

Exactly the principle behind an American barbecue sauce, and not a coincidence that meco salsa works so well on ribs.

Low heat and a short toast

Fifteen seconds a side over medium-low. The meco is already smoked: the comal only wakes its oils.

And because it is a dark chile to begin with, you cannot use color as your signal. Go by smell. If it starts giving off its own smoke it has gone too far, and a burned meco stacks new bitterness on top of what it already has.

Then it needs a longer soak than anything else here — twenty-five minutes — because it is far more dehydrated.

What it is for

Grilling, above all. The chile’s smoke and the charcoal’s reinforce each other instead of competing, so it belongs with ribs, skirt steak, burgers, anything that has been over fire.

Also excellent in frijoles charros and as the base of a pork adobo.

With fish, eggs or delicate antojitos it is simply too much. That is morita’s job.

Buying and storing

Uniform grey-brown and heavily wrinkled. Unlike every other dried chile on this site, brittleness is normal here — the meco is dehydrated on purpose and should not feel supple like a guajillo.

What it must do is smell, and strongly. One that does not smell has nothing left to give.

Sealed glass jar, away from light and moisture, well over a year.