Homemade Enchilada Sauce Mix You’ll Wish You’d Made Years Ago

Raise your hand if you’ve got a drawer full of half-used spice packets and empty enchilada sauce cans piling up in your recycling bin.

Yeah, us too. That’s exactly why we started making our own enchilada sauce mix in a jar — and once you see how simple it is, you’ll wonder why you ever bought the canned stuff.

This is a mix-in-a-jar recipe, meaning you build a big batch of dry mix once, store it on your pantry shelf, and then scoop out what you need whenever a recipe calls for enchilada sauce. One quart jar makes about four batches, and one batch is the same size as a traditional store-bought can (about 10-12 oz). That’s four cans of sauce from one jar you built in about ten minutes.

Let’s walk through it.

Building Your Mix

Here’s what goes into one quart jar:

• 1 ½ cups tomato powder
• ½ cup chili powder
• ½ cup flour (this is what thickens your sauce later)
• ¼ cup dehydrated onion
• 2 tablespoons sugar (offsets the sharp flavor of the tomato powder)
• 4 teaspoons ground cumin
• 4 teaspoons garlic powder
• 4 teaspoons smoked paprika
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper

Layer everything into your jar, pop the lid on, and shake it up. Once it’s mixed, it genuinely looks pretty enough to leave sitting on your shelf — but flavor-wise, you have to give it a good shake first.

A Quick Note on Tomato Powder

If you’re making your own tomato powder, it’s worth knowing that color can vary quite a bit depending on how you made it. Tomato powder made from dehydrated tomato sauce comes out a true, deep red. Tomato powder made from freeze-dried tomato slices will vary depending on the tomato variety you used.

We make ours from dehydrated sauce most of the time because it’s a lot cheaper than buying pre-made tomato powder. Either way works fine in this recipe — it’s just good to know so you’re not caught off guard by the color.

Freeze-Dried vs. Dehydrated Onion

For the dehydrated onion, you can use the thin dried minced onion from the grocery store, or your own dehydrated or freeze-dried onion. Just know these aren’t a 1-to-1 swap.

Dehydrating shrinks food by almost 50%, while freeze-dried foods keep close to their original volume. So if you’re using dehydrated onion, use a little more. If you’re using freeze-dried, use a little less. We like to crush the onion into the jar so it’s still a bit chunky — not powder-fine.

Cooking One Batch

When you’re ready to make sauce, here’s how one batch (¾ cup of your mix) comes together:

1. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil (or your oil of choice) in a saucepan.
2. Add ¾ cup of the jar mix and toast it in the hot oil for about 2 minutes. This step wakes up the spices and gives the sauce that signature enchilada flavor.
3. Add 2 ½ cups of water and bring it to a light simmer.
4. Simmer uncovered for about 10 minutes, stirring every couple of minutes. Leaving the lid off lets it evaporate and thicken up properly.
5. Stir in 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and immediately remove it from the heat.

That vinegar step might sound a little strange, but it’s what brings out the tang enchilada sauce needs. The sauce will thicken a bit more as it cools, so don’t panic if it seems thin right off the stove.

Why This Is Worth Doing

Once you’ve built your jar, making enchilada sauce takes about 15 minutes start to finish, and you’re not relying on a can full of preservatives you can’t pronounce. It’s also just plain frugal — one jar replaces four cans, and you control exactly what goes into it.

This recipe is one of many featured in our Mixing Jars Volume 2 cookbook, and we’ve got a giveaway open right now for it. Comment “enchilada” below and we’ll send you a direct link to enter, or check the link in the description.

We hope this one saves you a trip to the store next taco night!