This sauce is inspired by the legendary La Victoria Orange Sauce – a secret family recipe that may never be revealed to the public.
The restaurant owner has dropped hints and other authors have tried to recreate the smoky flavor and creamy texture, with limited success. The Danger Dog street vendors who buy bottles of Orange Sauce from La Victoria in San Jose outsell the ones with ketchup and mustard considerably. You’ll need an immersion blender, a high-performance blender, or a food processor for this recipe.
Ingredients:
- 4 halved tomatoes
- 1 quartered yellow onion
- 1 cup of vegetable oil
- 4 cloves of garlic
- ¼ cup of dried arbol chiles
- ¼ cup canned chipotle peppers in adobo (only add the peppers)
- 2 teaspoons adobo
- ½ cup of water
- ⅓ cup of white vinegar
- 4 teaspoons of kosher salt
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
Instructions:
- Add ¼ cup of the oil to a pan and bring to medium heat. Add your tomatoes, onion, and garlic, and raise the heat to medium-high for about 4 minutes to really brown the exteriors. Remove the veggies and place in a separate bowl.
- In another bowl, combine your water and vinegar and dried Arbol chiles, and let the chiles soak up the liquid and re-hydrate. Don’t throw away any of your liquids when making this recipe, but remove the chiles and place them in your empty pan (which should still have a bit of oil left in it). Add another ¼ cup of oil to the pan, as well as the chipotle peppers and adobo and cook for a few minutes over medium-high heat.
- Add your peppers to your other vegetables in a small bowl. Collect the oil from your pan and your water-vinegar mixture in a separate bowl. Put both liquids and veggies into a food processor or high performance blender (Blendtec or Vitamix) and puree until fairly saucy. Add your brown sugar and salt and then slowly add the oil a spoonful at a time to allow it to form an emulsion within the mixture. If you cannot get the sauce to mix, consider adding a splash of water and a tiny bit of vinegar to the mixture and re-puree.
- This sauce is best kept in a squeeze bottle so you can quickly apply it to your Danger Dog. Store in the refrigerator after making, as the vinegar content isn’t high enough to make this shelf-stable for more than a few days.
