Salsa borracha

A sauce named for its liquid

Salsa borracha means drunken sauce. It is a group of chile sauces in which an alcoholic beverage is part of the liquid seasoning. Its base is usually the dried pasilla, a long, dark chile named for its wrinkled, prune-like skin. The chile is toasted, softened and blended, often cooked after blending. Other dried chiles appear in other versions, and the name covers a wide range of recipes rather than one formula.

The sauce is popular in Mexico City and the central states, where it is usually served with barbacoa of lamb or goat. A northern Mexican drunken salsa also exists, and it uses beer instead of pulque.

Pulque, beer and the change between them

Pulque is a fermented drink made from agave sap. It is described as having deep pre-Hispanic roots and as sacred in the Mesoamerican period, when its use was limited to certain classes. It remained the traditional liquid for this sauce, and it is the reason the salsa has its name.

Beer came with European brewers after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. By 1925 Mexico was producing about 50,000 litres of beer a year, despite the strong preference for pulque in central Mexico. Beer could be bottled, transported and stored far longer than pulque, which is why it spread. One source gives 1941 as the year beer consumption first exceeded pulque consumption, and the sources differ on some dates. Pulque has since partly revived.

Why beer replaces pulque

The sources read give the practical reason for the substitution: pulque is not available everywhere, while beer is. Cooks use a light beer to soften the chiles in some versions, and others cook the sauce with tequila. Where the sauce is made with beer, the flavour is changed, and the page keeps the two versions apart rather than presenting beer as equal to pulque.

The sauce itself, as opposed to the two drinks, is not dated in the sources read. Modern adaptations that add fruit, such as prune and orange, are later variations, and they are not the traditional form.

Open questions

The salsa's own early history, its earliest recorded recipes and the local names used in different regions are not established by the sources read. The recipe source for the salsa was not readable during this research, so the cooking steps above are general and need checking against a tested recipe before use.