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Creamy salsas By Fermín Vega

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.

Prep
10 min
Cook
8 min
Makes
about 2 cups
Difficulty
Easy
Heat Medium
Method Boiled Blender

Real heat that fades with a drink of water. Jalapeño territory.

Ingredients

Makes about 2 cups

  • 1 large avocado ripe, about 7 oz of flesh
  • 10 oz tomatillo about 8 small, husked and rinsed
  • 3 serrano pepper
  • ½ bunch cilantro
  • 1 clove garlic
  • ¼ white onion
  • 1½ tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp juice lime keeps the color
  • ¼ to ½ cup water the tomatillo cooking water

Keeps 2 days refrigerated

Method

  1. 1

    Husk and rinse the tomatillos, rubbing until they stop feeling sticky. Simmer them with the whole serranos, the garlic and the onion in water to barely cover, 8 minutes, until they turn from bright green to dull olive.

  2. 2

    Drain, saving a cup of the cooking water. Let everything cool for five minutes — blending hot tomatillo with avocado turns the sauce brown and slightly bitter.

  3. 3

    Blend the tomatillos, chiles, garlic, onion and salt until completely smooth, about 30 seconds.

  4. 4

    Add the avocado flesh, the cilantro and the lime juice. Blend again until the sauce is glossy and uniform.

  5. 5

    Thin with the reserved cooking water a tablespoon at a time until it pours off a spoon in a ribbon. For a squeeze bottle, go slightly thinner than looks right — it firms up cold.

  6. 6

    Taste for salt. Pour into a jar, press plastic wrap directly onto the surface, and refrigerate.

Good with

Carne asada tacos · Grilled chicken · Quesadillas · As a dip with chips

Ask anyone in the US what the pale green sauce at a taqueria is and most will say “avocado crema” or “sour cream sauce.” It contains neither. It is avocado, tomatillo and chile, and the reason it looks like a dairy sauce is emulsification, not cream.

That makes it one of the very few taqueria staples that is accidentally vegan, and it also explains why it tastes lighter and greener than it looks.

Why the tomatillos get boiled

You could make this raw and some places do. Boiled is better, for two reasons.

Raw tomatillo is aggressively tart, and next to avocado’s fat that sharpness stands out rather than blending in. Boiling converts some of that acid and brings out sugar, so the two ingredients meet in the middle.

Boiling also breaks down pectin in the tomatillo, and it is that pectin, whipped with avocado fat in the blender, that produces the creamy body. A raw version is thinner and separates faster.

The five minutes of cooling matter

Do not blend hot tomatillo straight onto avocado. Heat oxidizes avocado quickly — the sauce goes from bright green to olive-brown in the jar — and it also brings out a faint bitterness in the fat.

Five minutes off the heat is enough. It does not need to be cold.

Thinner than you think

This sauce sets up considerably as it chills. A sauce that looks right at room temperature will be a paste out of the fridge.

If it is going in a squeeze bottle, thin it until it seems slightly too loose. Use the tomatillo cooking water rather than tap water — it carries flavor, and plain water dilutes everything you just built.

Adjusting the heat

Three serranos in this quantity is a medium sauce, around level 2. Because the avocado fat coats the tongue, this sauce reads about one level milder than the same chiles in a fat-free salsa.

That is worth knowing in both directions: to make it genuinely hot you need more chile than you would expect, and to make it mild you can use one serrano and still taste the chile clearly.

Keeping it

Two days, refrigerated, in a sealed jar with plastic wrap pressed onto the surface. The lime slows the browning but does not stop it.

It does not freeze. Make it in the quantity you will use.

Common questions

Is there cream in this?

None, and there is no dairy of any kind. That is the surprise of this sauce for most people in the US, where it is often assumed to be a sour cream sauce. The texture is entirely avocado emulsified with boiled tomatillo, which is why it is one of the few taqueria sauces that happens to be vegan.

Why did it turn brown?

Avocado oxidizes on contact with air. The lime juice slows it and pressing plastic wrap flat onto the surface — not stretched over the rim — slows it a lot more. Even so this sauce is at its best the day it is made and is noticeably duller on day three.

Can I use jalapeños instead of serranos?

Yes, use four to five. They are milder and much fleshier, so the sauce comes out a little thicker and greener. Serrano gives the cleaner, sharper flavor this sauce is usually made with.

It came out too thin and will not thicken.

Blend in half an avocado more. Water cannot be removed once it is in, so always add it in small amounts at the end. Overcooked tomatillos that burst in the pan also cause this — they leave their body in the water.

Can I freeze it?

Not well. Avocado separates on thawing and the texture goes grainy. This is a two-day sauce made in small batches, not one to stockpile.