You really don’t need any cheese in enchiladas if you’ve got a flavorful enchilada sauce. It’s the sauce that penetrates the tortillas, making that wonderful soft, moist texture with a deep infusion of flavor in each bite. This easy dairy-free red enchilada sauce recipe is one of my favorites. It’s super-fast to prepare and uses ingredients that you might already have in your pantry.
Why You’ll Love this Dairy-Free Red Enchilada Sauce
- Boldly Flavorful: A generous dose of chili powder with hints of cumin, garlic, an onion contribute to a deeper flavor. But don’t under-salt! Salt is essential to rally make the ingredients come together and pop.
- You Choose the Heat: I use and suggest a mild chili powder. But you can pick a hotter one, if preferred, or even add a pinch of cayenne.
- Fast & Easy: From start to finish, this dairy-free red enchilada sauce is made in 15 minutes or less!
- Budget Friendly: It’s made purely with pantry ingredients (and water) for a cheap homemade sauce that tastes so much fresher than canned.
- Versatile: Use it to make enchiladas, an enchilada bake, or even a Mexican pizza! It pairs best with chicken or beef, but you can also make vegan red enchiladas with beans and your favorite dairy-free cheese or vegan queso.
Ingredient Tips & Options
- Oil: You can use your favorite cooking oil in this dairy-free red enchilada sauce recipe. We like regular olive oil, extra-light olive oil (not extra-virgin), grapeseed oil, avocado oil, non-GMO canola oil best. But most other oil types will work fine. I would just stay away from stronger tasting oils, like unrefined coconut oil or sesame oil, and delicate oils, nut oils.
- Chili Powder:Both New Mexico and California Chili Powder are relatively mild. If you choose another type of chili powder, it could end up spicier.
- More Spices: If you want a little more seasoning in your enchilada sauce, you can double the cumin, garlic powder, or onion salt (or all three). Or you can increase the chili powder by up to 1 tablespoon. But taste test it and make sure you aren’t adding too much heat!
Special Diet Notes: Red Enchilada Sauce
By ingredients, this recipe is dairy-free / non-dairy, egg-free, nut-free, peanut-free, soy-free, vegan, plant-based, and vegetarian.
For gluten-free enchilada sauce, you can substitute your favorite all-purpose gluten-free flour blend or sweet white rice flour.
Dairy-Free Red Enchilada Sauce
This recipe makes enough red sauce to cover enchiladas in an 8x8-inch pan. If you are making a 13x9-inch batch, you might want to double this recipe. This recipe is adapted ever-so-slightly from Allrecipees.
Ingredients
Method
- Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to medium, stir in the flour and chili powder, and cook while stirring constantly for about 1 minute. You want to cook the flour a little, but do not burn it.
- Gradually stir the tomato sauce into the flour mixture until smooth.
- Stir in 1 cup water, cumin, garlic powder, and onion salt continue cooking over medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring often, or until thickened slightly. If it thickens too much, whisk in more water until it reaches your desired consistency.
- Taste and season with salt, if desired.
Nutrition
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Let us know how it was!You’ll also love our Green Chile Tomatillo Sauce Recipe!
