By 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.
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 10 min
- Makes
- about 2 cups
- Difficulty
- Easy
Real heat that fades with a drink of water. Jalapeño territory.
Ingredients
Makes about 2 cups
- 6 pasilla chile stemmed and seeded
- ¾ cup pulque or dark beer — see the note below
- 3 cloves garlic unpeeled
- ¼ white onion
- ¼ cup juice orange
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1½ tsp salt
- ⅓ cup cotija cheese crumbled, to finish
- 2 tbsp red onion diced, to finish
- ½ tsp mexican oregano
Keeps 4 days refrigerated
Method
- 1
Stem and seed the pasillas. Toast them on a dry comal over medium-low heat, 10 to 15 seconds a side, pressing them flat. They are already dark, so go by smell rather than color.
- 2
Roast the unpeeled garlic and the onion on the same comal until soft and blackened in patches, about 8 minutes.
- 3
Put the toasted chiles in a bowl and pour the pulque or beer over them — not water. Leave 20 minutes, until they are pliable.
- 4
Squeeze the garlic out of its skins. Blend the chiles with their soaking liquid, the garlic, the onion, the orange juice and the salt. Blend briefly: this salsa is meant to be a little coarse.
- 5
Heat the oil in a small pan until it shimmers. Pour the salsa in — it will spatter — and cook 5 minutes, stirring, until it darkens and thickens slightly.
- 6
Taste for salt. Pour into a bowl and top with crumbled cotija, diced red onion and the crumbled oregano. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Good with
Barbacoa · Lamb and goat · Grilled meat · Warm tortillas, on its own
The salsa that goes with barbacoa on a Sunday morning in central Mexico. Dark, complex, faintly sour, with crumbled salty cheese over the top — it is one of the few Mexican salsas that is served as much for its own sake as for what it goes on.
It is also a salsa built around an ingredient that is close to impossible to get in the United States, so let us deal with that first.
About the pulque
Pulque is fermented agave sap. It is milky white, thick, faintly sour, low in alcohol, and it has been made in central Mexico since well before the Spanish arrived.
It does not travel. It ferments continuously, has no meaningful shelf life, and the fresh product exists essentially nowhere outside central Mexico. Canned pulque turns up in some US Latin markets and is a distant approximation.
So the honest instruction for a US kitchen is: use a dark Mexican lager. Negra Modelo is the standard answer and is stocked almost everywhere. It brings malty sweetness and a light sourness in roughly the direction pulque goes.
What changes: the salsa is a little cleaner and less funky. Pulque has a lactic tang that beer does not. It is a good salsa either way, and calling the beer version the real thing would be a lie — but it is the version most people reading this will make, and it is worth making.
Do not use a hoppy beer. IPA bitterness collides with the pasilla’s own bitter edge and the result is genuinely unpleasant.
Soak in the alcohol, not in water
This is the technique that defines the salsa. The toasted chiles rehydrate in the pulque or beer, not in water, so they absorb its flavor as they soften.
That soaking liquid then goes into the blender with everything else. Throwing it out would discard most of the point.
Toast pasillas by smell
The pasilla is nearly black to begin with, so color tells you nothing about doneness — the same problem as the chipotle meco.
Ten to fifteen seconds a side over medium-low, pressing flat with a spatula, and pull it off the moment it smells toasty. A scorched pasilla is bitter in a way that no amount of orange juice or sugar corrects, and this chile is already carrying a natural bitterness that you are trying to balance rather than amplify.
Why orange juice is in here
The pasilla’s raisiny, faintly bitter profile needs a sweet acid against it. Lime is too sharp and too green; orange has the sugar to round the bitterness and enough acid to lift the whole thing.
If your salsa tastes flat and heavy, more orange juice is usually the fix before more salt.
The cheese is not a garnish
Crumbled cotija over the top is part of the recipe, not decoration.
The salsa is dark, deep and slightly bitter. Sharp salty cheese cuts across it and provides the contrast that makes it work as something you eat with a spoon on a warm tortilla.
Cotija is available in most US supermarkets now. If you cannot find it, feta is the better substitute than anything else — dry, crumbly and aggressively salty, which is exactly the role.
What it goes with
Barbacoa — slow-cooked lamb or goat — which is what it exists for, and the pairing is close to canonical.
Also excellent with any grilled red meat, and genuinely good on its own, spooned onto a warm tortilla with the cheese.
Keeping it
Four days refrigerated. Add the cheese and onion topping when you serve rather than storing it on top, where the cheese goes soggy.
Common questions
What is pulque, and can I get it in the US?
Fermented agave sap — a milky, slightly sour, low-alcohol drink that predates the Spanish arrival. It is essentially unavailable fresh in the US: it does not travel, ferments continuously, and has a shelf life measured in days. Canned pulque exists in some Latin markets and is a shadow of the fresh product. For this salsa, use a dark beer instead; see below.
Which beer should I use?
A dark Mexican lager — Negra Modelo is the usual answer and is available nearly everywhere in the US. It brings the malty sweetness and light sourness that pulque contributes. Avoid hoppy beers: IPA bitterness fights the pasilla, which already has a bitter edge, and the result is harsh.
Why is it called drunken salsa?
Because of the pulque. There is very little alcohol in the finished salsa and most of what there is cooks off in the frying step — nobody is getting drunk on it. The name refers to the ingredient, not the effect.
Can I skip the cheese?
You can, but the cotija is doing real work. The salsa is dark, bitter-edged and slightly sour, and the salty crumbled cheese is the counterweight. Without it the salsa reads flat. Feta is a reasonable US substitute — drier and saltier than most cheeses, which is what you want.
Mine tastes bitter.
Either the pasillas scorched during toasting or you left the veins in. Pasilla carries a natural raisiny bitterness that is part of its character, but burnt pasilla is a different and unpleasant bitterness. The orange juice is there partly to balance it — add a little more, or a teaspoon of sugar.