What Makes a Great Taco Sauce?
Tacos are an easy way to break from the usual dinner routine, and they provide a fun and flavorful meal. Taco sauce brings extra seasoning and spice to taco filling, nachos, and enchiladas. It can even be used as a marinade to add Tex-Mex flavor to your favorite meats. Our chefs define high quality mild and medium taco sauce as having a vibrant color with a moderate amount of sheen. The sauce should appear thick and opaque, not watery and transparent. Its aroma should reveal a sharp intensity, with some complexity from notes of tomato, cumin, chile, onion, and garlic. Taco sauce achieves a balance of taste when moderate saltiness is the predominant taste, followed by slightly lower but still moderate sourness. Sweetness should closely follow the sourness, with bitterness barely noticeable. Look for high flavor intensity—the relative strength of ingredients’ flavor—in the best taco sauce. The flavor complexity will be defined by the same notes as those in the aroma, including cayenne. E
