Mexican Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

Bhavna's Food Journey

Feb 16

My love for Mexican cuisine is well known. I prepare so many dishes that I have created a separate section with all Mexican dishes. I also enjoy preparing sauces and salsa at home. Recently I posted roasted tomatillo salsa verde recipe. I also make spicy tomato salsa (pico De gallo) and mango salsa. I prepare many sauce/dip/chutney at home. This time I thought why not try this Mexican sauce at home? I had few red bell pepper and tomatoes lying around so decided to give it a try. I did not have chipotle or jalapeno but I used chipotle sauce instead. You need few ingredients from the pantry and can create this amazing sauce.

It did not take a long to prepare. I can use this sauce for tacos, enchiladas, nachos, and any Mexican dishes. I had some leftover sauce which I used it on dosa and we thoroughly enjoyed it. This sauce was little spicy with the hint of sweetness from red pepper. I used air fryer to roast but you can definitely use direct fire or oven. I stored it in the fridge and lasted for a week.

Preparation Time: 10 minutes

Cooking Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:
1 big or 3 small red bell pepper
2 tomato medium size
1/2 big or 1 small onion
2-3 garlic cloves
1 jalapeno or serrano pepper or chipotle
1 cup chopped cilantro (coriander) leaves
1 tsp cumin powder
1/4 tsp paprika or Kashmiri chili powder
1 tbsp lemon juice
Salt to taste

Procedure:

1. Arrange whole red bell pepper, tomatoes, onion (cut in half), garlic cloves (with skin) and jalapeno (if that's what you are using for heat) in the air fryer tray or oven tray. Set the air fryer on Roast mode, 400F for 20 mins. After 10 minutes, remove onion, garlic and jalapeno and continue roasting red pepper and tomato. Check it every few mins. Roast veggies until charred. Mine took around 20 mins.
Air fry veggies
Air Fried veggies

2. Keep veggies on a side to rest. Once cools down, remove red pepper skin and seeds, tomato skin, garlic skin, seeds from jalapeno. Add cilantro, cumin powder, paprika (Kashmiri chili) powder , lemon juice and salt to the veggies.
Roasted veggies

3. In a chopper or blender, add everything and blend it and make smooth sauce.
Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Mexican Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

Delicious red pepper sauce is ready to use. For heat, you can use hot pepper of your choice or availability. If you don't like it spicy then skip it. I used chipotle sauce while grinding all veggies since I did not have other fresh hot peppers handy.

You can use this sauce for enchiladas, tacos, nachos. I also used leftover sauce on dosa and it tasted superb! Roasted veggies adds smoky flavour to this sauce. Adjust the heat level as per your choice.
Nachos