Red Chile Sauce

Red chile sauce — dried red New Mexican chiles rehydrated, puréed, and cooked into a smooth, brick-red sauce with garlic, oregano, and cumin — is the other half of New Mexican cuisine's fundamental duality (alongside green chile sauce). Where green chile is bright, vegetal, and roasted, red chile is deep, earthy, dried-fruit-sweet, and warm. The dried red chiles used in New Mexican cooking are the same varieties as the green (Hatch, Sandia, Big Jim) left on the plant to ripen and turn red, then dried in the sun — *ristras*, the long strings of dried red chiles hung from portals and vigas across New Mexico, are simultaneously a preservation method, a kitchen ingredient, and a cultural symbol. Rancho de Chimayó — the restaurant in the village of Chimayó in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains — has served red chile sauce to the same standard since 1965, and the Jaramillo family's cookbook (in Garth's Kindle library) documents the technique.

Dried red New Mexican chiles (stems and seeds removed) toasted briefly on a dry skillet or in a hot oven until fragrant and slightly darkened, then rehydrated in hot water for 20-30 minutes, then puréed smooth with garlic, Mexican oregano, a pinch of cumin, and salt. The purée is strained to remove skin fragments, then cooked briefly (10-15 minutes) in a small amount of oil or lard to concentrate the flavour. The finished sauce should be smooth, brick-red to deep burgundy, with a consistency that coats the back of a spoon — thicker than a broth, thinner than a paste. The flavour should be the chile itself: earthy, warm, slightly sweet (from the dried fruit character), and moderately hot.

• Mexican *salsa roja* (dried chile sauce — the same technique, different specific chiles)
• Korean *gochugaru* paste (dried red pepper as sauce base — the same preservation-through-drying-and-rehydration principle)
• Turkish *biber salçası* (red pepper paste)
• Peruvian *ají* sauces
• The drying of peppers, the rehydration, and the conversion into a smooth sauce is universal wherever *Capsicum* is cultivated

Over enchiladas, over tamales, over huevos rancheros, over carne adovada (AM3-12), over posole. Red chile sauce is the mother sauce of New Mexican cuisine, the way Creole sauce (LA2-01) is the mother sauce of New Orleans. It goes on everything.