Taco Bell Sauce Recipe

Taco Bell's sauce packets are thin tomato sauces sharpened with vinegar and seasoned with chili spices; the Hot one adds jalapeño. This copy simmers an 8-ounce can of tomato sauce with vinegar, two tablespoons of pickled jalapeño, chili powder, onion and garlic for ten minutes and blends it smooth. It makes about a cup and a quarter.

What is in Taco Bell's sauce packets

Taco Bell publishes an ingredient list for each packet in its nutrition labels. The Hot Sauce reads: tomato puree, jalapeño, vinegar, food starch, salt, chili spices, minced onion, sugar, natural flavours, maltodextrin, preservatives and garlic concentrate.

The others are variations on it.

Packet	What the label lists, in order
Mild	tomato puree, vinegar, starch or xanthan gum, salt, chili spices, sugar; no jalapeño
Hot	tomato puree, jalapeño, vinegar, starch, salt, chili spices, minced onion, sugar
Fire	tomato puree, jalapeño peppers, vinegar, starch, chili powder, minced onion, onion juice, spices
Diablo	tomato puree, a seasoning of starch, salt, spices, sugar, garlic and onion powder, then vinegar

Each packet has 0 calories and 30 to 55 milligrams of sodium, and all four are certified vegan. The copy follows the Hot list. A tablespoon of it comes to about 5 calories by USDA figures, and MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Taco Bell.

Recipe

Taco Bell Hot Sauce

A reconstruction of Taco Bell's Hot Sauce packet — tomato sauce simmered with vinegar, pickled jalapeño, chili powder, onion and garlic and blended smooth. About 1 1/4 cups, twenty servings of 1 tablespoon.

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Prep

5 min

Cook

10 min

Total

45 min

Serves

20

Cuisine

Mexican-American

Ingredients

• 8 ounces tomato sauce (1 can)
• 1/3 cup water
• 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped pickled jalapeños
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon dried minced onion
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions

1. Whisk the tomato sauce, the water, the vinegar, the jalapeños, the chili powder, the dried onion, the cornstarch, the garlic powder, the sugar and the salt in a small saucepan until no lumps remain.
2. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook for 10 minutes, stirring now and then, until the sauce has thickened slightly and the raw taste of the chili powder has gone.
3. Blend the sauce until smooth, with an immersion blender in the pan or in a blender.
4. Let it cool for 30 minutes and pour it into a bottle or jar. Refrigerate.

Nutrition

Calories:

5

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

Mild, Fire and Diablo from the same pan

• Mild: leave out the jalapeños. The label has none.
• Fire: use 3 tablespoons of jalapeños and add 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne.
• Diablo: the label names only "spices" for its heat. At home, 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne and 1/2 teaspoon of smoked paprika in place of the jalapeños give a hotter, smokier sauce.

Taco Bell red sauce is something else

The red sauce inside the burritos is not one of the packets. Its label lists water and a seasoning of maltodextrin, starch, paprika, salt, tomato powder, spices and onion powder, with no vinegar and no jalapeño. It is milder and thinner. The creamy sauce for nuggets is a third thing, the Bell Sauce.

For a quick version, whisk 1 cup of water with 2 tablespoons of tomato paste, 1 tablespoon of paprika, 1 teaspoon of chili powder, 1/2 teaspoon of onion powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons of cornstarch, and simmer for 5 minutes.

Why it is simmered and blended

Chili powder tastes dusty until it has cooked. Ten minutes also soften the dried onion and let the cornstarch thicken the sauce just enough to cling. Blending breaks up the jalapeño and the onion, so the sauce pours like the one from the packet.

Two weeks in the refrigerator

The vinegar helps the sauce keep. In a clean, closed bottle it lasts two weeks in the refrigerator. It thickens when cold; shake it.

It goes on the Taco Bell seasoning beef in tacos and burritos, and it is the hot taco sauce in the Fire Ranch.