Roasted red salsa from your toasted chiles
Ok so we did the tomatillo salsa, Ximena's four-turned-into-something-better, and now we're doing the red one. This is dried chiles instead of fresh, and it's a different process, but it's not harder. It's actually more forgiving once you know the one thing that trips people up.
That one thing: toasting.
What you need
- 4-5 dried guajillo chiles
- 2 dried ancho chiles
- 2 roma tomatoes
- 2 cloves garlic, skin on
- Quarter of a white onion
- Salt
- A splash of the soaking liquid or water to thin it
Stems and seeds out of the guajillos and anchos before you start. Just tear em open, shake the seeds out, pull the stem off. Takes two minutes, do it now while your hands aren't busy with anything hot yet.
Toasting the chiles — this is the part
Dry pan, no oil, medium heat. Lay the chiles flat and press em down with a spatula for maybe 10 seconds a side. You're not cooking these through, you're waking em up. You'll see em start to change color slightly and puff a little, and you'll get a smell that's kind of nutty and a little sharp.
The second you smell that, pull em. That's it. That's the whole toast.
Here's the thing — a guy in my branch in Ukraine, the dad who taught me the al pastor stuff, this is actually where I learned this too. He said toast em just until they smell awake, then you stop. I didn't listen close enough the first time I did it alone. Whole batch went from awake to bitter black in about 45 seconds because I got distracted, and the smell that comes off burnt dried chiles is nothing like the good smell. It's acrid. I had to toss the batch and do a DI run for chiles that afternoon I was so annoyed at myself. So watch em. Don't walk away, not even to grab something off the counter.
Soak the toasted chiles in hot water for about 15 minutes, just enough to cover em, until they're soft and pliable.
Charring everything else
While the chiles soak, char your tomatoes, garlic, and onion. Same dry pan, or a comal if you've got one, medium-high heat. Tomatoes and garlic go in with the skin on. Turn everything occasionally, you want real black spots, not just a light color change.
This is where I'll say the opinion straight out: char is a technique, not a garnish. People are scared of black spots on their food, like it means they messed up. It doesn't. That char is where the whole salsa lives. If nothing in your pan has a little burnt on it, you didn't push it hard enough. Tomatoes especially — let the skin blister and go dark in spots. That's flavor, not a mistake.
Garlic, take the skin off once it's charred and soft. Onion the same, char it in a chunk so it doesn't fall apart, then it goes in whole.
Blending
Drain the chiles, they don't need the soaking water necessarily but keep a little on the side in case your blender needs help moving. Into the blender: chiles, tomatoes, garlic, onion, a good pinch of salt.
Blend it. It'll be thick. Thin it with a splash of that reserved soaking liquid or plain water until it moves like a salsa should, not like paste.
Taste it. This is where people go wrong every single time, on every salsa, not just this one — salt it like you mean it. A flat salsa is almost always an under-salted salsa. It's not usually missing an ingredient, it's missing salt. Add a pinch, taste again, add another pinch if it needs it. You'll know when it clicks, it goes from tasting like tomato paste to tasting like something you'd actually want on your taco.
A word on the smell and your smoke detector
If you're doing this on a gas burner directly instead of a pan, crack a window first. I've said this before in this class but it's worth repeating for the red salsa specifically because dried chile smoke is sneaky, it doesn't look like much and then it's everywhere. Dry air up here just carries it right into the detector. Learned that one the hard way with poblanos, not chiles, but same idea.
Lime, at the very end
Don't blend lime into this one. Squeeze it fresh over the bowl right before serving, or better, let people squeeze their own over the finished taco. Acid dies fast once it's been sitting or heated, so it goes on last, always, every salsa in this whole spread. That one's not really an opinion at this point, it's just true.
One more thing, kind of unrelated but it's stuck with me — I had some Primary kids on an activity day a while back, taught em to squeeze lime over corn as a treat, and one of em just started eating straight lime wedges for the rest of the afternoon like it was candy. Got a text from the mom that evening. I apologized. Still worth it though, and if you've got kids around while you're making this, watch em near the lime bowl. They will just eat it.
Before next time
Get your dried chiles and your tomatoes on hand before we meet again, and if you've got a comal sitting in a cupboard somewhere, dig it out — it'll make the charring step easier than a regular pan.