Our Go-To Red Enchilada Sauce

In our house, we make quite a bit of chicken soup. In fact, Souper Cubes® was created because we were trying to come up with the best way to freeze our own chicken soup in easy and convenient ways. One of the things we noticed as we started making more chicken soup is we had lots of chicken from the soup. Almost always, we'd shred it up and leave it in the freezer for another meal instead of throwing it away. One night, craving Mexican food (which is quite often!), we decided to use a couple of cups of shredded chicken for enchiladas.

If you've been reading our blog, you'll see that we really love Serious Eats and their recipes. We found an enchilada sauce recipe that is fairly easy to make and freezes so well for later. In fact, we love the sauce so much we make 2x the quantity that the recipe calls for.

You can get the original recipe by Joshua Bousel here: Red Enchilada Sauce Recipe

Ingredients:

• 8 guajillo peppers, steam and seeds removed
• 2 28-oz diced fire roasted tomatoes
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon of cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of sugar
• 4 cups broth (you can use chicken broth, bone broth, or veggie broth)

Step 1: Gather all your ingredients

Note: The picture here is for the original recipe from Serious Eats. We love this recipe so much we made 2x the batch so that we can freeze leftovers.  All pictures and further steps are for the double recipe version.

Step 2: Roast your chilis 

While the original recipe calls for roasting in the oven, we just roast ours on top of a cast iron skillet. Make sure to turn it quite a few times so it doesn't burn.

Sometimes, I'll remove the stem and seeds before roasting the peppers. This makes it easier to handle when you take it off the cast iron.

Step 3: Place garlic, fire roasted tomatoes, cumin, black pepper, and roasted guajillo peppers in a blender

If you didn't previously remove the stem and seeds from the guajillo peppers, make sure to do so first. Once you've done that, place in a blender. You will want it blended to a smooth consistency.

Step 4: Strain the sauce

You'll notice on the original recipe, it calls for straining it directly into the pot. I've found that when the oil is hot and the sauce splatters in, it just makes a mess I try to avoid. To make my life easier, I first strain the sauce using a mesh strainer over a large bowl and stir with a spatula. Then I pour the sauce into the pan with hot oil.

Though, I've tried it both ways. If you want to reduce the amount of dishes you have to clean, place the strainer directly above the pot and use a spatula to help strain the sauce.

Step 5: Reduce the sauce for ~10 minutes, then add in stock and bring to a boil. Add salt and sugar.

After you've reduced the sauce, add 4 cups of broth. I ended up using 3 cups of chicken-beef bone broth and 1 cup of veggie broth because that's what we had in the freezer. Really, any chicken or veggie broth is fine. 

Bring back to a simmer for 10-15 minutes, cover partially with a lid.

Step 6: Cool sauce, then freeze!

Once the sauce has cooled off a bit, they're ready to freeze! 

When I originally wrote this post back in June 2018, we only had 1-cup freezing trays. Now we've designed a new 2-cup tray. We've been testing it for several months and plan on selling it this September 2019. Since we only make enchiladas when it's the two of us, it makes more sense for us to freeze some of the leftovers in the new 2-cup trays.

Step 7: Once frozen, cubes pop out easily!

We love having these on hand! While the store-brought brands are convenient, they're often filled with so much sodium. Plus, since we always keep shredded chicken in our freezer, this becomes a super easy meal to put together. All you need is some cheese, tortillas, and fresh cilantro! 

Note: 8 cups fit in a single-gallon size freezer bag, which makes for a souper organized freezer!

Ready to make and freeze your own enchilada sauce? Get yourself some Souper Cubes® trays.