You might have read in my about page that one of my culinary goals is to master great Texas Queso. My understanding is that this was invented in San Antonio and when I lived in Austin I used to drive down to San Marcos to eat at Herberts Taco Shack. This place had the most amazing queso I ever tasted. I’ll be totally honest, and one of the things I hated about Texas was TexMex. To me it was more like ketchup tacos. The exception to this was Herberts and the one aspect of TexMex I have always thought they got right was the Queso.
That being said. Last night I was watching my favorite television show diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and ,he was in Nashvile at a joint called Redheaded Stranger named after one of the greatest Country Western concept albums of all time by Willie Nelson. Anyone who has lived in Austin, Texas, for even a short amount of time knows that Willie is almost a deity in Austin. Super nice guy I once worked on a film set on his ranch in Lucky Texas outside of Austin. More importantly, Willie is the spiritual leader of the Outlaw Country movement. Which is how I feel about Queso. To get this recipe right, it’s going to take an outlaw. I even submitted Herberts to Guy Fieri’s show a few times hoping to find the secret to that Queso. I always wondered how a Mexican restaurant could serve anything but homemade tortillas, but I guess you have to be an Outlaw like Redheaded Stranger to do things properly. This is why I’m so excited about this outlaw queso recipe.
The good news for me is that I found a recipe to try they posted the famous Totchos recipe, but they left out how to make the Jalapeño Hot Sauce so I decided I needed to try it. This is one of the key ingredients in the queso, so I replayed the video back 20 times trying to figure out exactly how it was made. What I love is that it has rice wine vinegar which will help it last longer. When I make my Habanero hot sauce, it only stays good for a week. I tried to add vinegar to it, but it ruined the flavor.
The thing I love about this Queso recipe is that it calls for Hatch peppers. I have a stash of green hatch peppers but I’m going to need to locate some red hatch peppers to test the queso recipe. Hatch are my favorite pepper of all time. I might have to use Red Anaheim peppers instead because the Hatch season just ended. Again you have to be an outlaw to be making TexMex using New Mexico hatch chile, doing it the right way unlike everyone else.
Our Review Of This Jalapeño Hot Sauce Recipe
It’s not the best. It could be that because we don’t have the actual measurements, we just ruined the recipe. We prefer our Habanero Sauce recipe with salt and garlic and a better flavor. It could be that it’s designed this way out of the necessity of being part of the queso. It might have better flavor if you used the seeds and entire Jalapeño. 3 out of 5 Stars.
PrintNot Spicy Jalapeño Hot Sauce
Not spicy hot sauce because of the sweet avocado flavor added in. This is thick more like a salsa than hot sauce.
- Prep Time: 5 Minutes
- Cook Time: 1 Minute
- Total Time: 6 minutes
- Yield: 12 Ounces 1x
- Category: Salsa
- Method: Blender
- Cuisine: TexMex
Ingredients
- 1/2 Yellow Onion
- 4 Jalapeño
- 1 Avocado
- 1/2 Bunch Cilantro
- 1/2 Lime
- 1/4 cup Rice Vinegar
Instructions
- Cut Jalapeño in quarters long ways, take out the seeds and stem middle
- dice yellow onion
- Juice the lime
- Add all of the ingredients into the blender (Rice Vinegar, Lime, Cilantro, Avocado, Onion, Jalapeño)
- Blend until pureed
Notes
This recipe was created after watching the episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives featuring Redheaded Stranger in Nashville.
We used a Vitamix just like they did on the show.
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