By 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.
- Prep
- 10 min
- Cook
- 15 min
- Makes
- about 1½ cups
- Difficulty
- Medium
It burns and it lingers. Most table salsas live here.
Ingredients
Makes about 1½ cups
- 25 chile de arbol stems removed, seeds left in
- 6 morita chile
- 1½ cups vegetable oil neutral — canola, corn or sunflower
- ⅓ cup sesame seeds
- ⅓ cup peanut raw, unsalted, skinless
- 8 cloves garlic thinly sliced
- 1½ tsp salt
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar (optional) off the heat, at the end
- 1 tsp piloncillo (optional) or dark brown sugar
Keeps 3 months at room temperature in a sealed jar
Method
- 1
Snip the stems off the chiles. Do not open them or shake out the seeds — in a macha you use the whole chile.
- 2
Heat the oil in a deep saucepan over MEDIUM-LOW. This is the step that decides everything: the oil should be warm, around 250–275°F, not shimmering. Drop in one slice of garlic — it should bubble lazily, not sizzle and brown.
- 3
Fry the sliced garlic until pale gold, about 3 minutes, then lift it out with a slotted spoon and set aside.
- 4
Add the peanuts and fry 2 minutes until evenly golden. Lift them out.
- 5
Add the sesame seeds and stir for 1 minute, until they start to pop and turn light gold. Lift them out with a fine strainer, not a slotted spoon — the seeds slip through the slots.
- 6
Last, all the chiles at once, 40 seconds, stirring without stopping. They go from matte to bright red and give off a sharp smell. Kill the heat immediately and let them sit in the hot oil 2 more minutes.
- 7
Let the oil cool to warm before blending. If you blend it hot it keeps cooking and turns bitter, and the steam builds pressure under the lid.
- 8
Pulse everything together — chiles, garlic, peanuts, sesame, oil and salt — in short bursts. A good macha has texture, it is not a purée. Stir in the vinegar and piloncillo at the end and give it one more pulse.
Good with
Fried eggs · Tacos of any kind · Pizza · Avocado toast · Noodles
Salsa macha is a different idea of what a salsa can be. No tomatoes, no tomatillos, no water, no broth: dried chiles and seeds confited in oil and barely ground. That is why it is served by the teaspoon rather than the ladle, and why it lives in the cupboard instead of the fridge.
It comes from Veracruz, from around Orizaba and Córdoba. The name comes from macho, for how fierce the original was: chile, garlic and oil, nothing else.
If you have bought a jar of “Mexican chili crisp” recently, this is what it was trying to be, and it costs a fraction to make.
Medium-low heat, not high
This is the mistake that ruins nine out of ten homemade machas.
The oil should sit somewhere around 250 to 275°F — warm, not shimmering. Without a thermometer, the test is a slice of garlic: if it bubbles slowly and steadily, you are there. If it sizzles and browns within ten seconds, the oil is too hot. Kill the heat and wait.
At frying temperature a dried chile carbonizes in five seconds, and burned chile does not taste toasted, it tastes bitter, permanently.
Each ingredient on its own clock
| Ingredient | Time | What you are watching for |
|---|---|---|
| Sliced garlic | 3 min | Pale gold, never brown |
| Peanuts | 2 min | Evenly golden |
| Sesame seeds | 1 min | Start to pop and turn gold |
| Chiles | 40 sec | Matte red turns bright red |
Lifting each one out with a slotted spoon and setting it aside feels fussy the first time. It is the only way every ingredient lands on its mark and none of them burns.
Blend it warm, not hot
When you kill the heat, the chiles stay in the hot oil another couple of minutes, still giving up color and flavor. Then you wait for the oil to drop to warm before blending.
Blending it hot keeps cooking it, which turns it bitter. It also builds steam pressure under a blender lid, which is worth avoiding.
What the texture should be
A macha is not a cream. Pulse it in short bursts until you have a mixture with identifiable pieces of chile, broken peanut and whole sesame seeds floating in red oil. You should be able to see the bottom of the jar through it.
Over-blend and you get a homogeneous paste. Still good, but you lose the pleasure of biting into a piece of peanut.
The vinegar and the piloncillo
Neither is traditional in every version and both improve it. The tablespoon of vinegar, added off the heat, brings an acidic edge the salsa lacks on its own and stops it feeling heavy. The teaspoon of piloncillo rounds off the bitterness of the toasted chile.
Both optional. If you only add one, add the vinegar.
Storing it, and the one rule
Glass jar with a lid, in the cupboard, three months. Refrigerated it lasts longer but the oil solidifies and you have to take it out ahead of time.
Dry spoon, always. Water is the only thing that will spoil a macha. A wet spoon, a finger, or a chip dipped straight into the jar introduces moisture, and a three-month jar becomes a two-week jar.
What to put it on
Eggs, tacos, quesadillas — obviously. But also pizza, pasta, avocado toast, ramen, popcorn, corn on the cob, a slice of buttered bread. It is the most portable salsa here and the one people end up putting on food that has nothing to do with Mexico.
Common questions
Why does salsa macha keep for months without refrigeration?
Because there is no water in it. Microorganisms need moisture to grow, and a salsa made only of oil, dried chiles and seeds has almost no available water. Sealed in a jar with the oil covering the solids, it holds for three months in the cupboard.
What oil should I use?
A neutral one: canola, corn, sunflower or generic vegetable oil. Olive oil has a flavor of its own that fights the chile and a low smoke point. For a richer version, stir a spoonful of toasted sesame oil in at the very end, off the heat.
Mine came out bitter. What happened?
The oil was too hot. This is the mistake that ruins most homemade macha: people heat the oil as if they were frying potatoes, and at 350°F a dried chile carbonizes in about five seconds. Aim for warm oil where a slice of garlic bubbles slowly.
Why fry each ingredient separately?
Because they burn at different speeds. Sesame takes one minute, chiles forty seconds, peanuts two minutes, garlic three. Throw them in together and by the time the peanuts are golden the sesame is carbon, and the whole batch tastes bitter.
Is this the same as Chinese chili crisp?
Same idea, different tradition and different flavor. Chili crisp usually leans on Sichuan peppercorn, star anise and soy; salsa macha leans on smoked Mexican chiles, peanuts and sesame, with no numbing element at all. Salsa macha has been made in Veracruz for generations.
Can I make it without peanuts?
Yes. Swap in more sesame, pumpkin seeds, or chopped almonds. The oldest Veracruz versions are just chile, garlic and oil — peanuts and sesame are later additions that became standard.