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Mexican Barbecue Sauce
1/2 CUP OLIVE OIL I ONION, CHOPPED I GARLIC CLOVE I CHILI PEPPER, MINCED, OR CAYENNE 1/2 TABLESPOON SALT 2 LARGE TOMATOES, CUT-UP 2 TABLESPOONS CHILI POWDER 1/4 CUP VINEGAR 1/4 CUP WATER Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil. Add onion and slowly fry until lightly browned. Add garlic, chili, salt and tomato and simmer until thickened. Add remaining ingredients and cook 5-8 minutes, stirring constantly. Use as a basting sauce while grilling or roasting meats.
A thin, oil-rich basting sauce of the mid-century outdoor-cooking genre — closer to a Mexican-inflected mop than to a thick bottled barbecue sauce. The method is straightforward, but the ingredient list needs reading carefully against the instructions.
- Only a spoonful of oil starts the panThe recipe calls for 1/2 cup olive oil total but uses just 1 tablespoon to fry the onion. The remaining 7 tablespoons go in with the vinegar and water at the end, which is what makes this a basting sauce rather than a salsa — the oil carries heat and seasoning onto the meat and keeps it from drying.
- Chili pepper or cayenneOne fresh minced chili is the intent; a jalapeño or serrano is a reasonable stand-in. If substituting cayenne pepper, start at 1/4 teaspoon — dried cayenne is far hotter by volume than a single fresh pod.
- Chili powder is the American blendIn a book of this vintage, chili powder means the compound seasoning of ground dried chiles with cumin, oregano and garlic, not pure ground chile. Two tablespoons of it is a substantial amount and carries most of the flavor.
- TomatoesTwo large fresh tomatoes, cut up, skins and seeds included. Out of season, a 14-oz can of whole tomatoes drained and roughly chopped gives a better result than pale supermarket fruit.
- Cook the tomato down properly"Simmer until thickened" is the step that decides whether the sauce clings to meat or runs off it. The recipe gives no time; work over medium-low heat until the mixture is jammy and most of the liquid has gone, which may take a quarter of an hour or more depending on the tomatoes.
- The final five minutesOnce the vinegar, water and remaining oil go in, keep stirring — the sauce will want to separate, and constant motion holds it together long enough to get it into a bowl. It will separate again as it stands; stir before each application.
- Basting and burningThe sugars in tomato and onion scorch over direct fire. Apply during the last third of grilling, or brush repeatedly over indirect heat and finish over the coals.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 cups, enough to baste 3-4 lb of chicken, pork or beef. The recipe gives no keeping instructions; refrigerate and use within a few days.
Barbecue sections in American outdoor-cooking books of the postwar decades commonly carried a "Mexican" or "Spanish" sauce alongside the tomato-and-molasses standard, and they tended to mean much the same thing: chili powder, garlic, vinegar and oil. Commercial chili powder — a ground blend built for shelf stability and consistency — is usually traced to Texas in the closing years of the nineteenth century, and its wide availability is what let home cooks north of the border produce something they recognized as Mexican-tasting without sourcing dried chiles. The heavy proportion of oil marks this as a mop rather than a table sauce — a working liquid meant to be slapped on with a brush or a cloth swab over a long fire, a technique generally traced to the communal pit barbecues of the Southwest and the South.