Red 28 min
Ancho chile salsa
Sweet, dark and barely hot. The ancho is a dried poblano, and this is the mildest dried chile salsa there is — the one everyone at the table can eat.
Mild
Mexican salsa recipes
Every recipe here lists its heat on the same 0–5 scale, so you can actually compare them, and the timing includes charring, soaking and resting rather than pretending they take no time. If you would rather start from the chiles you already own, use the chile search.
- 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 - 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 - Creamy 5 min
Creamy chipotle sauce
Five minutes, one blender, one can of chipotles in adobo. The smoky pink sauce on every taco shop's counter, made properly.
Medium - Regional 25 min
Salsa borracha (drunken salsa)
Pasilla chiles, orange and pulque, topped with cotija. The classic barbacoa salsa — and an honest answer about what to use when you cannot get pulque.
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 - Red 28 min
Morita salsa (smoky chipotle table salsa)
Dried morita chiles with roasted tomato and a little piloncillo. Real smoke from the chile itself, not from a can and not from liquid smoke.
Hot - Macha 25 min
Peanut salsa macha
Salsa macha with peanuts and sesame, confited in oil. Keeps two months on the shelf and is the version most people prefer.
Medium - Pickled 27 min
Pickled jalapenos en escabeche
The jar on every taqueria table, with carrots and onion. Frying the vegetables first is what separates these from the canned kind.
Hot - Pickled 10 min
Yucatan pickled red onions
Bright pink, sharp and ready in an hour. The onions on cochinita pibil, cured in sour orange rather than vinegar.
No heat - Green 10 min
Raw green salsa
Tomatillos, serrano and cilantro, blended raw. Five minutes, no cooking, and sharper and fresher than any cooked version.
Medium - Macha 25 min
Salsa macha (Mexican chili crisp)
Dried chiles and seeds confited in oil, no water at all. That is why it keeps for months on the shelf and why you end up putting it on everything.
Hot - Red 24 min
Salsa negra
Chiles fried nearly black in oil with garlic. Intensely hot, deeply savory, keeps a month, and a few drops go a long way.
Very hot - Green 20 min
Salsa verde (cooked tomatillo salsa)
Tomatillos simmered with serrano and garlic, blended with cilantro. Rounder and sweeter than the raw version, and it keeps a week.
Medium - Regional 30 min
Sikil pak: Mayan pumpkin seed dip
A pre-Hispanic dip of toasted pumpkin seeds, roasted tomato and habanero. No dairy, no oil, and probably the oldest recipe on this site.
Mild - Red 30 min
Taqueria red salsa
The thick, dark red salsa in the squeeze bottle at a good taqueria. Three steps most home versions skip: fry the chiles, strain, then cook it in oil.
Very hot - Guacamole 15 min
Tomatillo guacamole
Guacamole with raw tomatillo instead of tomato. Sharper, it browns more slowly, and it is the version that surprises people.
Medium - Regional 12 min
Xnipec: the Yucatan habanero salsa
Four ingredients, no cooking, and genuinely brutal heat. The name means dog's nose, for what it does to you. Built on sour orange, not lime.
Brutal
Publicidad
How this catalogue is organised
Not by color and not by region, but by technique — because that is what you actually do in the kitchen. Boiling tomatillos and confiting dried chiles in oil are different processes with different results, even if both end up in a molcajete.
- 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.
The heat scale
Every recipe carries a number from 0 to 5. It is our own scale and it measures the finished salsa, not the raw chile: a very diluted habanero salsa can burn less than a concentrated serrano one. That is exactly what a Scoville figure cannot tell you when you are deciding what to make for dinner.
- 0 — No heat: Kid friendly. Nothing to warn anyone about.
- 1 — Mild: You taste the chile, it does not burn. Below a jalapeño.
- 2 — Medium: Real heat that fades with a drink of water. Jalapeño territory.
- 3 — Hot: It burns and it lingers. Most table salsas live here.
- 4 — Very hot: You will sweat. Serve it with a small spoon.
- 5 — Brutal: Habanero level. A few drops is the serving size.