Yucatecan · Sauce
Recado Rojo
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, an earthy, grounding base, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 60 g whole annatto seed (achiote), brick red and not faded brown
- 14 g black peppercorns
- 8 g allspice berries (pimienta gorda)
- 6 g Mexican oregano, the large brittle leaf kind
- 4 g cumin seed
- 2 g whole cloves
- 3 cm piece true cinnamon bark (canela)
- 40 g garlic cloves, unpeeled
- 18 g fine salt
- 80 ml sour orange juice (naranja agria), or 40 ml orange with 20 ml grapefruit and 20 ml lime
- 15 ml white vinegar
The skills inside
Tortillas on the comalCharring over open flameStraining & passing through a sieveMashing & puréeing
The words inside
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Char the unpeeled garlic on a dry comal over medium heat, turning, until the skins are blackened in patches and the cloves collapse under a thumb, about 12 minutes, then peel. 12 min
- Toast the oregano, allspice, cumin, cloves and cinnamon in the dry pan for about 40 seconds, only until the cumin smells nutty and the first wisp of smoke lifts, then tip them straight out of the hot pan.
- Grind the annatto seed on its own in a spice mill until it is a fine rust powder with nothing rattling, grind the toasted spices with the peppercorns, and sift both through a fine sieve.
- Mash in the garlic and salt, then work in the sour orange juice and vinegar a spoonful at a time until you have a stiff clay brick that holds a clean thumbprint.
- Wrap tightly and rest at least 12 hours before use so the colour bleeds through evenly. It keeps a month refrigerated. 600 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Tortillas on the comal 27 recipes
- It puffs. On the second turn the tortilla lifts into a dome as the trapped water flashes to steam and splits the two faces apart; a tortilla that never puffs was pressed too thick, cooked too cool, or turned too often.
- Freckled, not blackened: small brown spots across a pale field. An evenly browned tortilla has been on too long and will be a cracker by the time it reaches the table.
- It folds without cracking while warm, and still folds after five minutes under a cloth. A tortilla that splits along the fold has lost too much water on the comal.
- The edges are unbroken and roughly round, with no ragged fringe: a fringed edge means the masa was too dry when it was pressed, and no amount of heat will fix it afterwards.
- It smells of toasted corn rather than of scorch or of raw lime. Raw lime means the nixtamal was under-rinsed; scorch means the comal was above the working heat.
Where it goes wrong The masa was too dry or the comal too cool. A dry masa cracks at the edge on pressing and cannot generate the steam that puffs it; a cool comal dries the tortilla through before the water can flash, so it leaves the heat stiff, pale and already stale.
Charring over open flame 31 recipes
- The surface met the fiercest heat available (flame, a broiler, or bare hot metal) with nothing between them, and it shows as true blistering and blackening rather than gentle, even browning.
- The char matches the surface’s fate: where it will be eaten, black sits in patches over deep colour with every face having had its turn, and where the skin is to be peeled away, it may go to an even black, because the char there works on the flesh below and then leaves with the skin.
- It smells of smoke and toasted surface with no acrid edge that stings the nose: acrid means it went past, and acrid does not cook out.
- Just under the char it is cooked (softened, steaming, collapsed, or puffed, whichever the dish wants) because the flame did the surface and the trapped heat did the rest.
- A taste carries the smoke without mouthfuls of ash: the black that flakes away is a seasoning, not a layer.
Where it goes wrong It was left on one face too long or held too close, so one side carbonised to ash while the rest stayed raw, and the smell turned acrid, which follows the dish through every later step and cannot be seasoned away.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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