My first taste of a Raspberry Chipotle Sauce changed my life. I’d been strolling along the main avenue of the small Texas town of Fredricksburg, window shopping during an Oktoberfest. I walked into a store that offered samples of a variety of sauces and spice mixes and paused in front of the Raspberry Chipotle Sauce.
I liked raspberries. I liked the smokiness of chipotle peppers. Intrigued, I took a bite. It’d been poured over a small dish of cream cheese, and I scooped up a small bite of the appealing concoction.
My taste buds? EXPLODED.
I faithfully bought jars of raspberry chipotle sauce from them for years. And then one day I looked at the ingredients.
Sugar was the number one ingredient! That means there was more sugar in that sauce than raspberries. No wonder I’d become so quickly addicted.
Abandoning the raspberry chipotle sauce left a bitter taste on my tongue — a sense of regret and loss.
My roasted chicken, my pork chops, my salmon patties! They would never be the same again.
That is, until I decided to make my own. Turns out it’s easy to make raspberry chipotle sauce at home.
Easy Raspberry Chipotle Sauce Recipe
Yield: A little less than a pint.
Raspberry Chipotle Sauce: The Players
- 2 Tbsp. olive oil (where to find REAL olive oil)
- 1 jalepeño pepper, seeded and minced
- 1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
- 2 cups of fresh or frozen organic raspberries
- 1/4 C. honey (where to find REAL honey)
- 1 tsp. Swanson Organic Mexican adobo seasoning (where to find adobo seasoning)
Raspberry Chipotle Sauce: The How-To
1. In a small frying pan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add minced jalepeño peppers and cook until caramelized.
2. Add apple cider vinegar to the frying pan and stir gently, scraping the bottom of the pan to incorporate the browned jalepeño juices.
3. Add raspberries, honey, and adobo seasoning and cook down until sauce forms, stirring regularly. Simmer until reduced to desired thickness. If necessary to keep sauce from browning, lower the heat.
4. Remove your raspberry chipotle sauce from heat and pour into jar or bowl. Allow to cool before serving.
I’ve enjoyed this served over salmon patties, pork chops, roasted chicken, you name it!
Please note: I use Swanson Organic Mexican Adobo Seasoning for a number of reasons.
First, it’s rich in chipotle peppers where other adobo seasonings are just an herb blend. Second, it’s got a zesty kick of lemon in it as well. If you don’t use an adobo blend that has these two things, the recipe just won’t be the same. Technically, it wouldn’t even be chipotle because it wouldn’t have any chipotle peppers in it!
I suppose that if you wanted to, you could substitute in one canned chipotle pepper in adobo for both the fresh jalepeño pepper and adobo seasoning in this recipe. I’d also be sure to add a splash of lemon juice or a bit of lemon zest into the mix to get the extra lemony umph. Just be wary of how many canned goods you are eating! BPA levels in your blood have been shown to rise 1200% when you regularly eat canned goods. (It’s one of the many reasons I try to avoid them unless they’re home canned in jars or made by companies using BPA-free cans.)
(photo by methyl_lives)
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Wow, that sounds so good! My son loves cranberry sauce on his meats often times, so I bet he’d love this. How spicy is it?
I think it’s mild, but then again I’m from Texas!
I once served my very, very mild Clam Chowder with Bacon and Green Chiles to a visiting Minnesotan and he was sweating bullets. And when I say mild, I mean MILD. I really don’t think that recipe has ANY heat to it at all!
Thank you! My son really likes spicy food (I have made your caveman chili for him and he loved it) but I wasn’t sure if it was *really* spicy or not. 🙂 I think I will try this!
I bought a tin of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce just the other day and only ended up needing one pepper out of the can for the recipe they were purchased for. I froze the rest in a mini muffin tin for later use, but was wondering if you think I could substitute a pepper w/sauce for the seasoning in this recipe. I conveniently also have several freezer bags full of raspberries I picked over the summer lying around…
Love your philosophies!
I would probably sub the pepper in adobo sauce for the fresh pepper AND the adobo seasoning in this recipe. I’d also add a splash of lemon juice or zest because that’s part of what makes this particular adobo seasoning unique.
I wonder how this would work with fresh blueberries. They’re easy to find this time of year.
I don’t know. You could try it and lest us know. I’ve only ever had it with raspberries or blackberries.
I believe a chipotle is a smoked jalapeno, so I think I’d call this recipe Raspberry Jalapeno sauce, but it looks delicious anyway!
Chipotle is a smoked jalapeño, which is why this recipe calls for an adobo seasoning that had dried chipotle peppers in it!
Trust me, this tastes VERY chipotle-ey (if you’ll permit me to make up a word)!
First time visitor, saw this on Pinterest. Love the thought of raspberries and chipotle together! Think it would be so yummy on chicken or duck. I don’t know if I can find the special adobo seasoning, but love the suggestion above using a can of chipotle in adobo and some lemon zest.
Take care
Connie
Hope you enjoy it!
If we’re food renegades, don’t we grow and smoke, or at the very least, buy and smoke, our own jalapeno peppers to get the chipotles needed for this recipe? If you’re concerned about canned foods, there is an alternative! Just get nice, fresh, red jalapenos (they’re fully ripe, as opposed to the green ones), wash them and dry them, or seed them too if you like. They lay them out on a hardware cloth or similar screen, and make a little wood fire in your grill until it’s just smoldering, then put the chilis on the screen in there, cover, and smoke for a long, long time, keeping the smoldering going by stoking and adding more fuel. When you’re done, and want to call it a day, just put the chilis in a low (under 200 degree) oven to finish drying them. Leave them on the mesh screen. When they’re dry and crackly, they’re done!
My husband makes canned chipotles in adobo sauce every year with all our peppers from the garden. What a great use for all those jars we still haven’t used.
I lived in TX and I know the wonderful flavor combo of raspberry chipotle sauce. Now for the best margarita you may ever have….use a teaspoon or two of this sauce to your fav frozen margarita mix. Amazing!
I’ll be making this again this weekend, but substituting blueberries for the rasberries.
I found your FR website while looking for a raspberry chipotle sauce using honey as the sweetener, because I have my own organic berry patch and my own top-bar (chemical free) bee hives. I followed your advice about the Mexican Adobo seasoning, ordering it from Swanson’s without checking the ingredients list. Based on your “rich in chipotle peppers” statement, I was shocked that out of 12 ingredients, the first is sea salt and chipotle pepper is number 11, followed only by lemon juice.
I went ahead and made it by your recipe, but about all I could taste was salt. I added double the rest of the ingredients (except the adobo) and added a teaspoon of chipotle chile pepper and still it’s too salty.
Thank you!
Jane McWey, you’re welcome!
I made this and did not like it, would not recommend.
I am so saving this recipe!
This sounds divine! So going to have to try this! I was actually going for a raspberry chipotle sauce when I created my Chocolate Chili Raspberry BBQ sauce to go with this beautiful steak I had just purchased at the farmers market earlier in the day. I didn’t have any adobo seasoning and living in the country means you don’t just run back to the store. Thanks for this recipe Kristen.
I made this last year and it was not very good. this is an old post.
Won’t use Swanson.
Hello!
I was wondering if it would be possible to bottle or jar/can this sauce? How would one go about that, would there need to be a preservative in it like citric acid or something along those lines and/or how long they would last?