Chipotle Adobo Sauce

Chipotle Adobo Sauce, dried chipotle peppers cooked with aromatics, vinegar, and spices to make a thick, lush, smokey sauce which is used many ways in cooking. For it's versatility, I call it the Mexican Ketchup. Use it in BBQ, roasted chicken, slather on burgers, make taco sauce, pasta sauce or a spicy salad dressing. Gluten free, and vegan (when using vegan ketchup).. This is a magic sauce which everyone should make at home at-least once. 

Today's post will give you option to make Chipotle Adobo Sauce at home with easy pantry ingredients and a super simple  2-step recipe. (check complete list of recipes to cook with Adobo Sauce at end of post)

Chipotle Peppers and Adobo Sauce

If you are new to Chipotle Peppers or Chipotle Adobo Sauce, let me first introduce you to this flavor-ful ingredient.

Chipotle Peppers are ripe dried jalapeno peppers. The fully ripened Jalapenos are smoked and dried which is known as chipotle peppers. (peppers are deep dark red due to smoke). Smoky flavor is signature of Chipotle Peppers. Ground or cooked into a sauce, if you know chipotle, you can find it's fruity smokey flavor in any chipotle dish. 

Chipotle in Adobo Sauce is dried jalapenos, chipotle peppers simmered with aromatics, herbs, and seasonings to make Adobo sauce. Adobo is one of The most famous way of preserving smoked dried jalapenos. 

Does this look delicious or what?

Homemade Adobo Sauce

All these year, I used canned Chipotle Adobo Sauce and I love it. (not kidding) I was happy with store bought version homemade sauce recipe was on my to-try list since long. Sometime ago, I started buying dried chipotle peppers instead of canned adobo sauce. I came across a store which sold dried chipotle by pound and once I bought a bag... (glad I did) I dreamed adobo sauce until I made a few times. 

My family loves the homemade version so much that dishes like Chipotle Shrimp is on our dinner menu almost every week.

Honeslty, there were three reasons to make chipotle sauce at home:

1) Passion to make homemade sauce. My Chipotle Recipe collection speak for itself. I can never have enough of it. In my books, if you like an ingredient this much you should know about it more, what is it, how to prepare from scratch at home.

2) CDH Reader's Request: Few of CDH readers asked for a homemade adobo sauce. With this recipe, I'm keeping the promise.

3) Convenience and Good Quality: Make as-much as you like with quality ingredients. That's the point behind starting the CDH blog. Homemade is better in so many ways. Now, sometimes I double the recipe and refrigerate. It keeps well for 2-3 weeks. Sometimes, I even half the recipe if I need just for 1-2 dishes. Dried chipotle peppers keep forever. These day, I never have to make a run to store when planning a chipotle recipe. I just grab few peppers and make my own sauce when I want and how much I want.

Easy! Isn't it?

Chipotle Adobo Sauce recipe is so easy, once you try.. You will wonder why you never made at home. Buy a pack of dried chipotle pepper, rest ingredients for chipotle adobo sauce will be in your pantry (100% guranteed). Ketchup, vinegar, some  spices, garlic and onion. Once you make auce at home, I also gurantee you would want homemade-only. Honestly, it is a great condiment and fairly easy to prepare to not try once.

How to use Adobo Sauce:

Once, the mile stone of making homemade adobo sauce is done. There are SO many ways to use it. Honestly, CDH is the blog to look for Adobo Sauce Recipes. 0+ recipes to offer (all featuring amazing Chipotle Adobo Sauce) and growing.

I'm sharing few of my top recipes here. For a complete list follow link - Chipotle Recipes.

1) Chipotle Braised Tofu
2) Chipotle Margarita
3) Chipotle Barbacoa
4) Chipotle Cream Sauce Pasta
5) Chipotle Chicken Tikka Masala
6) Chipotle Burrito Sauce

Wish you all a great weekend. I'm on a pretty long weekend this week which started Wednesday -O:). (more on this later.)

-Savita