Skip to content
Salsita MX
Español Chiles
Creamy salsas By Fermín Vega

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.

Prep
5 min
Total
5 min
Makes
about 1½ cups
Difficulty
Easy
Heat Medium
Method No-cook Blender

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

Ingredients

Makes about 1½ cups

  • 2 chiles + 1 tbsp of the sauce chipotle in adobo
  • ¾ cup mexican crema Mexican crema, or heavy cream
  • ¼ cup mayonnaise
  • 1 small clove garlic
  • 1 tbsp juice lime
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp white onion (optional) finely chopped
  • 2 tbsp cilantro (optional)

Keeps 1 week refrigerated

Method

  1. 1

    Put the chipotles, the adobo sauce, the garlic, the lime juice and the salt in a blender. Blend 15 seconds until the chiles are fully broken up.

  2. 2

    Add the crema and the mayonnaise. Blend another 10 seconds — just long enough to combine.

  3. 3

    Stop there. Over-blending crema breaks it and the sauce turns grainy and thin.

  4. 4

    Taste. If it needs more smoke, add adobo sauce by the teaspoon rather than another whole chile — the sauce carries the flavor with much less heat.

  5. 5

    Stir in the chopped onion and cilantro by hand if using. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes before serving: it thickens and the flavors settle.

Good with

Fish tacos · Shrimp · Fries and roasted potatoes · Burgers and sandwiches

The pink sauce in the squeeze bottle at every taco shop counter, and the single most useful thing to do with a can of chipotles in adobo.

It takes five minutes and it is very hard to get wrong. The only two ways people manage are over-blending and using too much chile.

Use the sauce, not just the chiles

The most common mistake is treating the adobo as packing liquid and fishing out only the chiles.

The sauce is where most of the flavor lives — tomato, vinegar, garlic, a little sugar — and it carries a fraction of the heat, because the capsaicin stays in the chiles. So the sauce is the dial for flavor and the chiles are the dial for heat, and you can move them independently.

For a mild version with the full smoky character: one chile and two tablespoons of the sauce.

Do not over-blend

Ten seconds after the crema goes in, and no more.

Cream at high speed starts churning toward butter. The sauce breaks, goes grainy, and there is no way back. If it happens you can salvage it as a marinade, but not as a sauce.

Why it improves in the fridge

Straight from the blender this tastes a little raw and sharp. Half an hour cold and it is a different sauce: thicker, rounder, with the smoke integrated rather than sitting on top.

Two hours is better than thirty minutes. Overnight is better still, and it keeps a week, which makes it worth making on purpose ahead of time rather than at the last minute.

What it goes with

Fish and shrimp tacos, first and foremost — the pairing this sauce exists for.

It is also excellent on things that have nothing to do with Mexican food: fries, roasted potatoes, burgers, chicken sandwiches, and as a dip for anything fried. Smoke, acid and fat is a combination that works nearly everywhere.

Keeping it

Sealed jar, refrigerated, a week. The lime and the vinegar in the adobo do the preserving.

It does not freeze — the crema separates.

Common questions

What is Mexican crema, and what do I use instead?

It is a cultured cream, thinner than sour cream and slightly sweet rather than sharply tangy. Most US supermarkets carry it in the dairy case near the queso fresco. If you cannot find it, use heavy cream with a teaspoon of lime juice — not sour cream, which is much tangier and will make this taste sharp.

Do I need the mayonnaise?

No, but it helps. It stabilizes the sauce so it does not separate, and it makes it cling instead of running off. Without it use a full cup of crema and expect a looser sauce.

Mine turned out too spicy.

Blend in more crema — that is the only fix, since you cannot remove chile. Next time use one chipotle and a full tablespoon of the adobo sauce: the sauce gives you nearly all the flavor and a fraction of the heat.

What do I do with the rest of the can?

Purée the whole can, chiles and sauce together, and freeze it flat in a zip bag scored into squares. You can snap off one portion at a time for six months. Never leave chipotles in the opened can — the acid reacts with the metal within days.

Can I make it without dairy?

Yes. Use a cup of good mayonnaise and skip the crema entirely, or use the avocado salsa on this site instead, which is dairy free by nature.