This from scratch paleo enchilada sauce is both nourishing with gut healing bone broth and delicious. It’s so simple to make and comes together in only a few minutes with basic ingredients you likely already have stocked in your pantry! If you’re looking for an easy homemade, paleo enchilada sauce recipe – you found it.
Sauce spread over butternut squash enchilada casserole.
Our Real Food Journey
Back in 2012 when I was first introduced to the idea that eating real, unprocessed foods could have an impact on my health and began to dig deeper, my world was turned upside down. Prior to this, you could call me an extreme couponer. I would bring home massive grocery hauls, spread them across the kitchen table and have my husband guess how much I spent. We easily spent only a couple hundred bucks in food for the whole month.
The problem was, almost all of what I was buying was ultra-processed, packaged, food-like substances. Our food contained chemicals, additives, dyes, and hundreds of compounds that I have no idea how to pronounce, let alone have any idea what they are.
You can read all about our real food transformation story here and how that ultimately led us to change our health, get pregnant, and start homesteading.
I tend to be an all or nothing person. If I commit to doing something, I do it 110%. When I latched on to the idea that I needed to remove processed foods from our diet and switch to eating real foods, overnight I had tossed or donated almost everything in our fridge, freezers, and pantry and went to the grocery store stocking up on whole foods to replace them.
Real Food Recipes Can Be Simple
Over the last 10 years on this journey, I’ve learned how it is actually possible to make from scratch a lot of the food I was previously buying in a can or box. And bonus, by doing so I can use only nutrient dense, unprocessed ingredients, it tastes way better, and it actually can save a significant amount of money.
I remember the first time I came across the recipe for a homemade enchilada sauce somewhere out in the world wide web and my thought was “that’s it?” The recipe seemed so simple that it was too good to be true. From growing up never learning how to cook but primarily using convenience foods, I had a mentality that if it came in a can or box, it must be hard to make or require a million ingredients. However, what I kept learning time and time again was that those foods that are now almost always purchased in can or box form, are actually so simple to make and usually require just a few ingredients and a couple easy steps.
How to Use Enchilada Sauce
There are so many ways to use this paleo enchilada sauce. Our favorite is this butternut squash enchilada casserole. We have also added it to soups, in enchiladas, nachos, or a sourdough skillet.
Butternut Squash Enchilada Casserole served over rice
Over the years we’ve tweaked our recipe, adjusting the seasonings for different levels of heat and flavors. But the basic idea is always the same. That being said, feel free to adjust the spices here to your preferences. This makes a pretty mild enchilada sauce, which works well for our family but feel free to up the heat if that’s what you like!
What is a roux? Simply put, a roux is a cooked mixture of fat with a thickening agent that will cause a soup or sauce to thicken. This is the magic behind how to make this paleo enchilada sauce.
The Components:
Bone Broth – Bone broth is simply made by taking your leftover bones and inedible pieces from meat, covering it with water and a splash of apple cider vinegar and letting it simmer for several hours. Alternatively, this can be made much more quickly in a pressure cooker. Bone broth is an ancient superfood and contains an array of vitamins and minerals, skin enhancing collagen, and is excellent for gut healing. A vegetable stock or even whey leftover from making cheese also works well in this recipe in place of broth.
Arrowroot Powder – Arrowroot powder comes from the extraction of starch from the arrowroot plant. The arrowroot plant in a tropical tuber and when it’s extracted it becomes a white powder that is both flavorless and odorless. Arrowroot is a wonderful thickening agent and has two times the thickening power of wheat flour and avoids using cornstarch which usually is from genetically modified corn. We often use it to thicken soups, jams, fillings, and sauces like this enchilada sauce.
Chili Powder – This is a spice blend typically made with a blend of cayenne, cumin, and garlic to give a flavor profile that is commonly referred to as “tex-mex.” It is perfect for seasoning meat and beans and can vary significantly in its heat depending on the ratios of spices that are used. More cayenne will result in a much spicier chili powder.
Add chili powder and arrowroot powder to roux in saucepan.
Homemade Paleo Enchilada Sauce Recipe
Ingredients:
3 Cups Broth
3 Tbsp Arrowroot powder
3 Tbsp Chili powder
½ tsp Cumin
½ tsp garlic powder
½ tsp oregano
2 Tbsp Cooking Fat (Olive oil, coconut oil, lard, etc)
How to make:
Add your fat of choice to a saucepan over medium heat. Once the fat melts, add arrowroot starch and spices. Mix thoroughly for one minute until everything comes together and there are no clumps. Then, add your broth and stir gently over medium heat until it is brought to a gentle boil. Once it reaches this point, the sauce should start to thicken. After it has reached your desired consistency and can coat the back of a metal spoon, remove from heat. Note that it can continue to thicken a bit once in the fridge.
Enchilada sauce beginning to bubble and thicken.
Pour into a quart sized mason jar or desired covered container. This enchilada sauce will store in the fridge for up to one week.
Every time we make this, I think how strangely addicting this sauce is! What is your favorite way to use paleo enchilada sauce? I’d love to hear in the comments below.
Homemade Paleo Enchilada Sauce
This from scratch enchilada sauce is both nourishing with gut healing bone broth and delicious. It’s so simple to make and comes together in only a few minutes with basic ingredients you likely already have stocked in your pantry!
Ingredients
- 3 Cups Broth
- 3 Tbsp Arrowroot powder
- 3 Tbsp Chili powder
- ½ tsp Cumin
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp oregano
- 2 Tbsp Cooking Fat (Olive oil, coconut oil, lard, etc)
Instructions
- Add your fat of choice to a saucepan over medium heat.
- Once the fat melts, add arrowroot starch and spices. Mix thoroughly for one minute until everything comes together and there are no clumps.
- Then, add your broth and stir gently over medium heat until it is brought to a gentle boil. Once it reaches this point, the sauce should start to thicken. After it has reached your desired consistency and can coat the back of a metal spoon, remove from heat. Note that it can continue to thicken a bit once in the fridge.