Mexican Verde Sauce

What Is Verde Sauce?

Mexican verde sauce is a green salsa typically made of ingredients like tomatillos, jalapenos, onion, and lime juice. Verde sauce has a tangy, zesty, and slightly herbal flavor. It’s often used for tacos, enchiladas, burritos, and chilaquiles, since it brightens and brings freshness to these otherwise savory dishes.

Verde Sauce Recipe Ingredients

Our Mexican verde sauce is made with fresh produce and a little salt, water, and vegetable oil. Here’s what you’ll need to make our salsa verde recipe:

• Tomatillos
• Jalapeno
• White onion
• Cilantro
• Lime juice
• Salt
• Cold water
• Vegetable oil
• Minced garlic

If you’re not familiar with tomatillos, they’re small green tomatoes with husks. You can typically find them either near the tomatoes or peppers in the produce section of most grocery stores.

The reason we specifically use cold water in this recipe is that it helps preserve the vibrant green color of the vegetables. The color of the sauce will darken as it cooks on the stove, but the cold water helps it stay as green as possible. Since the color is where salsa verde (meaning “green sauce”) gets its name from, this minor detail matters!

Of course, you can use room temperature water if necessary. Just note that the color of your verde sauce won’t be quite as green or vibrant as it should be.

How To Make Mexican Verde Sauce

It’s super easy to make this verde sauce for tacos, enchiladas, burritos, or whatever your heart desires! All you need is a blender, a small saucepan, and about 15 minutes.

Here’s how to make our verde sauce recipe in 3 steps:

1. First, add the tomatillos, jalapeno, onion, cilantro, lime juice, and salt to a blender. Blend on low speed, adding cold water a little at a time as needed, until the consistency is smooth (but still thick).
2. Next, heat vegetable oil and garlic in a small saucepan over medium heat until the garlic is fragrant, about 1 minute.
3. Then, transfer the sauce from the blender to the saucepan and stir to combine. Cook until the sauce has darkened in color and tastes slightly tart, about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and serve, or let cool and store in the fridge for up to 1 week.

Cooking the blended salsa in a little bit of oil and garlic deepens its flavor and color. Plus, some Mexican dishes call for the salsa verde to be hot, like our chilaquiles verdes and carnitas burrito.

Depending on what you’re making the verde sauce for, you can either serve it hot, let it cool to room temperature, or let it cool and then refrigerate for serving cold later on. Keep reading for serving suggestions and what temperature you’ll want the sauce at for different dishes.

Mexican Verde Sauce Serving Suggestions

There are endless ways to serve salsa verde! Here are just a few recipe suggestions, with notes on what temperature you’ll want the verde sauce and how to use it:

• Chicken enchiladas – use room temperature verde sauce inside the filling and on top of the enchiladas, before baking them in the oven
• A restaurant-style wet burrito with carnitas – pour hot verde sauce over the burrito before serving
• Carnitas tacos – cook the pork in room temperature verde sauce, or drizzle room temperature or cold verde sauce over the tacos as a topping
• Chilaquiles verdes (green chilaquiles) with eggs – pour hot verde sauce over the tortilla chips
• Chips & salsa – dip your favorite tortilla chips into cold or room temperature verde sauce for a delicious snack

You can make verde sauce for any occasion, including Cinco de Mayo, family parties, or weekend brunch. However you choose to serve it, we can guarantee it’ll be a hit!