Chile Tamulado
When I decided to smoke up some cochinita pibil for Carne-val 2024, I came across a number of unique toppers that orginate from the Yucatán Peninsula that I wanted to try out too. Among those was chile tamilado, a roasted habanero salsa whose chile content was so high that it left me with a strong desire to see exactly how spicy this salsa is. There was also the big bonus that I could utilize the grill for preparing it, ultimately making it a recipe that fit into The Meatwave theme perfectly.
From what I can tell, chile tamulado really only requires two ingredients—sour oranges and habaneros. Recipes vary beyond that, but if you combine just those two things, you would still have the base salsa. Luckily I have a grocery store close to my home that almost always has sour oranges in stock, so it's not a stretch for me to go and grab the real thing. I know that's not the norm though, so if you fall into that category, a equal combo of orange and lime juice is a good substitute.
Moving on to the second requirement, it did seem like the traditional condiment is made from green habaneros. It's also not uncommon for both green and orange habaneros to be available at a few of my local groceries, but on the day I went shopping, they all only had orange, so I just went with them. The habaneros do need to be roasted, which you could do in a cast iron skillet or under the broiler inside, but if I have my way, using hot coals is my favorite choice. On the grill, I cooked the chiles until they softened and had charred in spots. I turned them pretty frequently to keep an eye on how they were cooking, and as each was done, I transferred them to a cutting board.
For my chile tamulado, I opted to add two additional common ingredients—garlic and onion. I also figured that the salsa would only be better if those got the grill-roasted treatment as well. For the garlic, I skewered unpeeled cloves and then grilled them until blackened in spots and the garlic had softened.
I also skewered a couple rings of white onion for easy grilling and cooked them until they were equally charred and lightly softened, similar to the garlic.
Once everything was done, I went inside and peeled the garlic, roughly chopped the onion, and removed the stems from the habaneros and tossed them all into the jar of a blender along with the sour orange juice. I gave everything a whirl and then added salt to taste.
As I would have expected for a salsa that had about 20 habaneros, this was damn spicy. It was probably one of the spiciest things I've made for this site, but even though the heat was so strong and upfront, the salsa still had an amazing depth of flavor. The strong fruitiness of the habaneros came through and lent a brightness to the salsa, which was both added to, and contrasted by, the sour orange—the ingredient that really made this salsa taste unique. I'm glad I chose to add the onion because it lent just a tiny bit of sweetness. From what I tasted, the garlic mostly blended in with the overall roasted flavor. In use, I applied this salsa sparingly to tacos, and while just a tiny spoonful didn't look like a lot, it added immense flavor that went incredibly well with the cochinita pibil. Because so little needed to be used, I had a fair amount of this salsa leftover and I tried it out with some chips too. While my first impression was that I couldn't eat too much of this as a dip, I ended up sitting and consuming chip after chip because the flavor became addictive, even if it left me with a scorching mouth.
