Chipotle in adobo: the can, and how to use it

For most people in the US this is the entry point to Mexican chiles, and it is genuinely good — but it is not the same ingredient as a dried chipotle, and recipes treat the two as if they were.

What is actually in the sauce

The adobo is not a neutral packing liquid. It is a sauce, and it is doing as much work as the chile.

Typically: tomato, vinegar, onion, garlic, sugar or piloncillo, and often a little oregano and cumin. So opening a can gives you smoke, acid, sweetness and aromatics all at once.

That is why a spoonful of it improves so many things immediately, and also why it takes over a dish if you are not paying attention. A dried morita gives you smoke and nothing else, and lets you build the rest yourself.

How hot it is

3,000 to 10,000 Scoville — a jalapeño to a hot jalapeño, since that is what a chipotle is.

The sauce dilutes it further, so a spoonful of adobo alone is quite mild. The chiles themselves carry nearly all of the heat.

How much to use

The most common mistake is too much. It is potent, and it is sweet and acidic in ways that stack up fast.

Starting points:

• 1 chile plus a teaspoon of sauce — a noticeable smoky note in a dish for four.
• 2 chiles plus a tablespoon — smoke is a lead flavor.
• A whole small can — for a marinade for 2 lb of meat, not for a bowl of salsa.

For a creamy chipotle sauce — the chipotle mayo found in every US taco shop — one chile and a teaspoon of the sauce in a cup of crema or mayonnaise is plenty.

What to do with the rest of the can

The problem everyone has: you use one chile and five are left.

Do not leave them in the open can. The metal reacts with the acid within days and puts a tinny taste into everything.

The good solution: purée the entire contents — chiles and sauce together — and freeze it flat in a zip bag. Score the flat sheet into squares before freezing and you can snap off one portion at a time, straight into a pan, no thawing. It keeps six months and it is more useful than the whole chiles were.

Failing that, transfer to a glass jar in the fridge, where it holds about three weeks thanks to the vinegar.

When not to use it

The adobo brings vinegar and sugar to everything, so it is the wrong ingredient wherever those are unwelcome.

In a fresh table salsa, it flattens the raw ingredients and reads as jarred.

In a delicate green salsa, it fights the tomatillo.

Where you want clean smoke — a mole, an adobo you are seasoning yourself, a rub — use dried morita or meco instead, so you control the acid and the sugar.

Use the can where its sweetness and acid are welcome: creamy sauces, dressings, marinades, beans, braises, anything with dairy.