Taste a region’s cuisine and you taste its culture. Nowhere is this truer than with the salsas, sofritos and sauces of Latin America. Layers of history, geography, time and tradition pile atop one another, as rich and complex as the sauces themselves.
And there’s never been a better time for product developers and foodservice research chefs to explore the culinary world next door. Mainstream North American palates are already being tantalized by churrasco-style restaurants, such as the Fogo de Chão chain, which are gaining in popularity. And the Floridian or Miami Cuban sandwich—just think panini and a simple, spicy mustard sauce— is a perfect example of how simple Latin American ingredients have changed today’s sandwich game.
You needn’t set off south of the border to capture the character of Latin America in your own sauces and seasonings. With a little grounding in the cuisines themselves—not to mention help from an arsenal of convenient, value-added ingredients—you can easily bring those flavors to consumers’ homes.
Consider the chile
If there’s one ingredient that says “Latin flavor” more than any other, it’s the chile. With its 6,000- plus years of history in the region, it should come as no surprise that chile peppers have typified the fiery bite of Latino dishes since pre-Hispanic times.
But fire isn’t all chiles offer. Latino cooks have made an art and a science out of recognizing—and maximizing—the full palette of profiles that chiles present. They know when and where to feature the scorching sting of a habanero —such as in fiery hot sauces like ixni-pec from Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula—and when it’s time to play up that same pepper’s fruitier, citrus notes—such as in a mangohabanero salsa. By smoking the green and grassy jalapeño, they transform it into the beguilingly smoky chipotle, a staple in adobo sauce. When immaturely picked and dried, the poblano is known as an ancho chile, with a sharp, fruity heat essential in moles and other cooked sauces. The mulato, a maturely picked and dried poblano, tastes similar, though chile-heads can distinguish it by its sweet, chocolate notes. The small, hot serrano chile is used throughout Mexico as a seasoning, most commonly while still green. And the tiny rocotillo, found in the Spanish Caribbean, is as fragrant as the habanero while packing none of its punch in terms of heat.
Beyond the large lexicon of chile names, physical features of different pepper varietals differ across growing regions and conditions, resulting in a spectrum of sizes and colors. Fortunately, chile suppliers and processors have done much of the sorting out of chile types for product designers. Those who really know their wares can help find the perfect pepper for creating the exact effect, be it subtle or spicy. Pepper processors have also eased product formulation and production by drying and roasting the chiles so manufacturers don’t have to.
If you’ve ever compared the flavor of a roasted chile to a fresh one, you’ll know this is no minor detail. Although both are delicious, the two are often worlds apart. Traditionally, cooks in Latin America would roast chiles one by one on metal or ceramic griddles called comales. These days, processors eliminate that painstaking process by employing more-advanced technologies that better control the process, such as in the fire-roasted, grilled vegetables from Gilroy Foods™. But the upshot is the same: a pepper sporting a smoky, almost caramelized, mellowness and a visually appealing char that has “artisanal preparation” written all over it.
Processors also save manufacturers a step by grinding, blending and puréeing peppers. Once upon a time, every Latin American household had a stone metate or molcajete (think mortar and pestle) in their kitchen for grinding chiles into a seasoning powder or, with the addition of ingredients like chocolate or pumpkin seeds, regional specialty sauces like moles. But industrial suppliers offer dehydrated and customized chile blends that pack bright color and flavor into convenient delivery systems, such as controlled-moisture products. These typically have less water content than individually quick-frozen (IQF) products, and can usually be added directly to applications without worrying about syneresis.
When it’s fresh flavor you’re after, prepared industrial ingredients like those in the Gilroy Foods GardenFrost® line deliver crisp, fresh chile taste in custom blends that allow you to pinpoint the precise Scoville heat value for your audience. Purées can be used as a base for anything from traditional salsas to a range of pan- Latino sauces.
Foundations of flavor
A full discussion of Latin American sauces wouldn’t be complete without celebrating the range of other foundational flavors beyond chiles. Take the tomato. Like the chile, it’s a New World fruit that provides a critical base note in so many of the region’s sauces.
