By I’ve got a tasty taco sauce recipe to share with you and it only takes about 15 minutes to make! This sauce perfectly balances acidity with fruitiness, spiciness with warmth, and sweetness with tanginess.
Homemade Taco Sauce Recipe
If you want to try something new but don’t know where to start, taco sauce is a great place to begin.
Taco sauce is a type of condiment that’s often used on tacos and other Mexican food. It’s very easy to make at home, and it’ll last for weeks in the refrigerator.
There are many benefits to making your own homemade sauce, especially when it rivals the ones you buy at the store. For one, you know the content of the sauce. Two, you can customize it to suit your needs. For example, if you want more heat in your sauce, you can add more pepper to elevate the heat levels and do the opposite if you want less heat.
Another advantage is that the taco sauce is so easy to make and requires little effort. You can even start out making the sauce while you’re putting together the other ingredients for your tacos.
What Is Taco Sauce Made Of?
Taco sauce is a red sauce made with mostly blended tomatoes and peppers. As the name suggests, the sauce is used to make tacos.
The ingredients used are easy to find. You probably already have them in your pantry:
- Canned tomato sauce: One can tomato sauce. Tomato sauce is not the same as tomato paste or marinara sauce, so look out for those when buying.
- Spices: Cumin, Chili, Onion powder, Garlic powder, Paprika, Black Pepper.
- White Sugar: To add a hint of sweetness to the sauce.
- Lime juice: To add some acidity and tanginess to the taco sauce.
- Salt: This is completely optional.
- Water: About three-quarter of a cup to cook the sauce.
This simple sauce will bring a fresh burst of flavor to any kind of taco!
How To Make Taco Sauce
All you need to do is combine water, tomato sauce, spices, and peppers together in a saucepan. Cook on low heat while occasionally stirring to prevent burning. Once the sauce is slightly thickened, you can remove it from heat and add the lime juice. Leave the sauce to cool and then pour it liberally on tacos, burgers, or anything that could use an extra dash of deliciousness.
Tips For Making Taco Sauce
This sauce is very easy to make but these tips will ensure that the entire process goes smoothly:
- Cook from start to finish on low heat to ensure you don’t overcook the sauce. When overheated the sauce tend to be excessively thick and gummy.
- Add the lime juice after you’ve finished cooking to allow the bright, tangy flavor to come through.
- If you want the same thick consistency as what you’ll get from the store-bought version, then refrigerate the sauce. It thickens up as you cool it.
- The heat level of this recipe is mild but you can customize yours to have more heat by adding some Mexican hot sauce.
Serving
Here are a few ways to serve taco sauce:
- Easy Chicken Tacos
- Fish Tacos
- Beef Tacos
- Carne Asada Tacos
You can also use it as a dipping sauce for Corn Chips, Burritos, Nachos, Quesadillas
Storage
You can refrigerate your taco sauce for up to 2 weeks and it will still retain the same fresh, spicy, and tangy flavors as the freshly made batch.
How Long Does It Take To Make Taco Sauce?
It only takes about 10-15 minutes to completely make this sauce from start to finish, including prep time.
Other Recipes You Might Like:
I hope you enjoyed the article and I hope it inspires you to try this delicious sauce!
Taco Sauce
Ingredients
- 16 oz tomato sauce 1 can
- ¾ cup water
- ½ teaspoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- ½ teaspoon paprika
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon white sugar
- 1 pinch salt optional
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper optional
- 1 tablespoon lime
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients except the lime in a saucepan, cook on high heat until boiling.
- Reduce heat to low and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or until slightly thickened. Simmer a little longer for thicker consistency.
- Turn off the heat and stir in the lime juice. Leave to cool and use as needed
Nutrition
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Thanks so much for updating the recipe! —Sandra
Hi, Lola,
Your taco sauce sounds awesome! However, there’s a tiny problem with the recipe. You mention lime juice in forward to the recipe and in the instructions, but there is no lime juice mentioned in the ingredients. So, how much lime juice is required? Hope to hear from you soon!
Warmly, Sandra
Hi, Sandra thanks for bringing this to my attention. I have updated the recipe to make it clearer.