Imitation Tacodeli Salsa Doña

Image source: https://austin.eater.com/2017/5/4/15536524/tacodeli-salsas-packaged

Salsa doña is essentially a roasted jalapeño/garlic emulsion that is rich, spicy, and delicious. It was created by Bertha Gonzales for the Austin chain Tacodeli and you can read its history here. Tacodeli recently started selling containers of salsa doña, but currently only in Whole Foods in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.

Since I want this sauce constantly, and not only in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, or Arkansas, this is a record of my attempts to replicate it. It came out pretty successfully in the end.

Left: Original doña sauce, Right: This recipe

There are several salsa doña recipes online, but many include extra ingredients or steps. From my comparison to the original sauce I’ve found a few key things:

1. The ingredients are only roasted jalapeños, roasted garlic, salt, water, and vegetable oil (or other neutral oil). i.e. no cilantro or lime
2. The original sauce includes some jalapeño seeds, not just jalapeño flesh
3. However, using all seeds from all peppers makes a sauce that is much spicier than the original (and the original is very spicy)
4. It doesn’t seem like Tacodeli removes the jalapeño skins before blending
5. During blending, adding more oil or more garlic increases richness and reduces spiciness

For me, the spice level is great with something substantial like a breakfast taco, but is too spicy for eating with tortilla chips.

Final recipe

• 5 jalapeños
• 10 cloves garlic (skin on) (As few as 5 cloves are fine)
• 1 teaspoon salt (5mL)
• 5 tablespoon vegetable oil (1/3 cup or 75mL)
• 1 tablespoon water

1. Chop off jalapeño tops/stems, and place with garlic on baking sheet
   

2. Broil on low for 10-15 minutes, or until garlic is squishable. Broilers vary, so time may vary
   
   Garlic is ready to go

3. Remove garlic from oven

4. Flip jalapeños and continue to broil on low for another 10-15 minutes, or until peppers have somewhat internally collapsed
   
   Jalapeños are done - charred somewhat and begun to collapse in on themselves

5. Place garlic and peppers in a closed container with a splash of water and let steam at least 15 minutes
   
   Pre-steaming. Coffee cans are good airtight containers for this step
   
   
   Post-steaming

6. Remove most seeds from insides of peppers, and set seeds aside. Remove any charred parts of jalapeños skins

7. Remove skins from garlic cloves

8. Blend peppers, garlic, oil, water, and salt on high (“liquify”) until very very smooth (and oil does not separate)
   
   Fully blended

9. Test for consistency. The sauce shouldn’t look thick, gloopy, or chunky, and should pour smoothly (like pancake batter consistency). Blend in one tablespoon of water at a time until satisfactory

10. Test for spice. Jalapeños vary widely in spice level, and the original sauce can be very spicy. If not hot enough, blend in 1/10th total seeds at a time until satisfactory. If too spicy for your taste even without seeds, try rescuing by mixing with lime juice, crema mexicana, or sour cream.

11. Refrigerate over night (or until cool). If it looks too thick after refrigerating, reblend with an additional tablespoon of water.

Results of experiments

Round 1:

• De-seeded jalapeños prior to roasting, added lime juice
• 3 jalapeños/3 garlic/0.5 tsp salt/3 tbsp oil/2 tsp lime juice
• Not spicy enough, missing flavor/spice from jalapeno seeds
• Also salsa doña definitely doesn’t have lime juice
• However this sauce was delicious, and the low spice level would make it a great party dip
  
  
  Left: Original doña sauce, Right: Round 1 sauce. Very good tortilla chip dip, but definitely not salsa doña

Round 2 (after acquiring doña sauce for comparison purposes) :

• Roasted whole jalapeños, removed skins
• 3 jalapeños/6 cloves garlic/0.5 tsp salt/3 tbsp oil
• Much closer to original flavor, but too spicy
• Consistency is too smooth (the original has more bits in it (jalapeño skins)
  
  
  Left: Original doña sauce, Right: Round 2 sauce. Original has more bits of jalapeño

Round 3:

• Roasted whole jalapeños, kept skins on, removed approximately 2/3rds of seeds
• 5 jalapeños/10 garlic cloves/5 tbs oil/1 tsp salt
  
  
  Left: Original doña sauce, Right: Round 3 sauce. Very close in appearance and flavor, but still somewhat too spicy. Using 9/10ths of seeds in final recipe

Bonus round:

• Added a tablespoon of water. Fixed any consistency issues with the original recipe.