Catfish Out of Water

My new summer obsession is making enchilada sauce! I make a decent amount of salsa every year. And am always thinking about making hot sauce... But enchilada sauce is a great (and easy!) middle ground. This habanero enchilada sauce combines homegrown peppers and tomatoes with onions and garlic. All it takes is roasting the produce in an air fryer, puréeing, and simmering until the entire house smells delicious.

My first try at Enchilada Sauce was with red chilis. This time around, I had a plethora of habaneros and tomatoes ripening in the garden. This batch is just as delicious, but with a little bit more kick! Almost a dozen habaneros will do that. For an even hotter version, I also recently made a Ghost Pepper Enchilada Sauce.

This new obsession with enchilada sauce is because I've been growing a bunch of tomatoes and peppers. Now that they're ripening, I'm constantly having to find something to do with them! Not that I'm complaining. This is a great problem to have! But it does pose the predicament of how preserve all of them before they over ripen on the vine... You can dry them, but I feel like making dried peppers kind of defeats the purpose of growing fresh peppers. I could also make salsa, but after enough batches, it was time for a change. And enchilada sauce has become my new, delicious solution!

Gallery

It should be noted that I almost always have a cast iron skillet on hand. If one of the several that I own are not on my stove cooling after I've used it, I store most of them in the proofing drawer under my oven. So, a lot of the time I'll take things out of the Air Fryer and plop them on a cast iron skillet. This is just where I hold things. They're not pivotal to the process and you don't actually need one for any part of this recipe!

Variations of Habanero Enchilada Sauce

With all of the peppers that I grew this year, I kept making enchilada sauce all summer long! Whenever I ran out, I just picked whatever was ripe at the time and started a new batch.

Enchilada Sauce w/ Habaneros

Enchilada sauce is incredibly easy to make at home. It just requires roasting peppers, putting them in a blender, and simmering. The entire process takes less than an hour and is ready to serve! For this particular recipe, I used an air fryer to roast yellow onions, garlic, and homegrown habaneros, tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes.

5 from 1 vote

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Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 35 minutes mins

Total Time 50 minutes mins

Course Side Dish

Cuisine Latin American, Mexican

Servings 2 cups

Equipment

• Air Fryer (or roasting method of choice)
• Large Pot
• Stovetop

Ingredients

  

• 10 habaneros
• 2 small tomatoes
• 2 dozen cherry tomatoes (or 2 large tomatoes total)
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/2 yellow onion
• 1 tsp. cumin
• dash salt
• dash pepper
• 3 c. water (divided, 2 c. + 1 c.)

Instructions

 

Roast Produce

• Place the chilis, tomatoes, garlic, and onion in the air fryer. It can help to cut the tomatoes and onion in half and pierce the chilis with a knife so they don't burst while cooking.

  Depending on the size of your air fryer, you may need to break this up into multiple batches. I cooked the peppers and the rest of the fruits and vegetables separately. You can also substitute any other roasting method of choice. An oven or BBQ would do just fine. It's more to get a char flavor than explicitly necessary.
• Cook for 7-12 minutes, or until the produce is lightly charred. The skin should begin to brown, but not entirely blacken or shrivel. You're trying to roast them, not dry them!
• Let cool to the touch.

Blend

• Once the produce are cool, add a food processor with 2 cups of water.
• Blend until puréed completely.

  In my Vitamix or Cuisinart Food Processor this takes about 15-20 seconds. In another blender, this might take a minute or two.

  Just be careful not to inhale the mixture when you open the lid! It's quite spicy.

Cook

• Add the puréed mixture to a large pot with the additional 1 cup water and the salt, pepper, and cumin.

  You can blend all of the water together when you puree it, but I found that it was easier to add 2/3 of the water then finish thinning it in the pot. None of this will effect cooking, though. Add as more or as little water as you need to puree the ingredients and then add the rest before cooking!
• Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer for 30 minutes, or until thickened to the desired consistency. Make sure to stir occasionally.
• Serve immediately or refrigerate. With so many hot peppers, this enchilada sauce will last a good while in the refrigerator.

Tips, Tricks, & Notes

• If you do air fry the vegetables for too long, don’t fret too much. You’ll still end up boiling the ingredients and they will re-hydrate. You’re pretty much okay with any amount of char as long as you don’t seriously burn them!
• You can substitute any kind of pepper of choice. Even dried peppers will re-hydrate with the first simmer. If you don’t have fresh chilis or other peppers and want to use dried ones, just skip the roasting step and go straight to the first cooking stage.