DIY Homemade Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce

You will never go back to canned!

When you do this and find out how easy it is to make Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce at home, you will never buy them from the grocery store again. You could go as far as making your own chipotles! Did you know that they are just roasted and dried jalapeño peppers? Crazy, right?

This sauce adds a great smoky flavor to your meals. It is also a great way to add some spice to your recipes. We use this in a burrito bowl, taco sauce, sauce for our chicken wings, in our homemade BBQ sauce, tacos, and our homemade Chipotle Chicken Chili. If you do not like your food spicy do not add too much of this sauce mixture to your cooking. Honestly a little goes a long way. We decided to purchase dried chipotle peppers from Amazon and I will link them below! If you have any leftover chipotle peppers you can grind them down and make your very own chipotle powder!

First things, first.

When you have percured your dried chilis you are going to want to rehydrate them. This will allow more flavors to transfer to your adobo sauce. It is super easy to do. All that you need is some boiling water. Put your chipotle chilis into a bowl and cover them with. I allow mine to soak for about an hour. Hang on to a cup water they were rehydrating in because we are going to use it in our recipe!

We also make homemade chili powder, and you can find the recipe here. We use ancho chilis, guajillo chilis, and chimayo chilis in ours and it is delicious! You can do this as well or you can use store-bought chili powder.

Blending the sauce for your Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce.

Take out your food processor! We use a rather large one so that we do not have to work in batches here, but if you only have a small blender or immersion blender you can do this in batches! Put your chili powder into the blender and cover it with two cups of warm water. This will also help to rehydrate the chilis in the powder which will make a smoother adobo sauce. Put the cover on the blender to trap the heat.

After 20 minutes add the Mexican oregano, tomatoes, apple cider vinegar, garlic, brown sugar, salt, cumin, cinnamon, and black pepper to your blender. You can use regular oregano here, but you will lose a bit of flavor. Mexican oregano has more of a lemon taste to it, and it adds something to this recipe. Blend on high until you have a sauce consistency. I usually compare this to a thicker BBQ sauce. If your sauce is too thick you can add some of the water from the soaking peppers to thin it out a bit. This will add some extra chipotle flavor to your adobo sauce.

Trust the process!

Add your olive oil or vegetable oil to a Dutch oven or a heavy-bottomed sauce pot over medium heat. Try to stay away from aluminum pots as some of that flavor can leach into the sauce. The reason this happens is because the ingredients are high in acidity.

Carefully add your sauce from the blender into your Dutch oven. Allow this to come to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes. While your sauce is reducing take your chipotle peppers out of the soaking liquid and add them to an airtight container. We use a very large mason jar for this step but feel free to use anything you have on hand. We have also separated the homemade adobo sauce into smaller jars and then added dried peppers into the homemade sauce.

When your sauce is done reducing on the stove add the sauce carefully to your airtight container. You can use these right away but they develop more flavors if you leave them in the fridge for a while!

If you make this recipe please let us know what you think! I hope it becomes a staple in your pantry and you never have to buy a can of chipotles ever again!

Things we used for this recipe!

• Our very favorite dutch oven.
• A food processor that does everything!
• These are the dried chipotles we ordered from Amazon!

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