Chipotle Paste

What is this paste?

This paste has a wonderful, smoky flavor, and is perfect to add to any Mexican food dish, soup, stew, or pasta. Add it to a marinade for fish or meat, because it’s perfect for grilling and barbecuing. You’ll get a smoky, spicy, seasoning that will kick up your meals with flair without adding too much spicy heat.

Chipotle paste is simply a paste made from a purée of chipotle chilies. These chilies are just dried and smoked jalapeños. Sometimes these pastes will include ingredients such as onion, garlic, tomato puree, vinegar, spices, dried herbs and sugar.

The brand of canned chipotles in adobo sauce I like has in its ingredients: water, tomato paste, dried chipotle peppers, vinegar, oil, salt, corn starch, and spices.

My recipe for chipotle paste is super easy, with no measuring or worry!

Even heat level

I also started making and using it as a way to even out the heat of the chilies. Sometimes I’d pull one of the chilies out and it was super spicy! And sometimes they were just mild. So by blending them all together I get a nice even heat. And, it makes the past easy to measure out.

Substitute or alternative

I’ve seen lots of people asking about a chipotle paste substitute because they don’t want to buy yet another ingredient that they might not use.

This recipe helps you eliminate the worry of not finding the paste in the store, or of spending too much money (a can of chipotles is super inexpensive).

So much easier

But, sometimes I find myself not wanting to go to the trouble of opening a can, chopping the one chipotle that I need, and then prepping the remainder of the can for freezing.

Stir a spoonful into Spanish rice. A spoonful into soup. Add some to a marinade or a dressing.

I might even try to come up with a nice spread or dip using this paste, sour cream, and some roasted corn.

Oh, and add it to your apple butter for a sweet & spicy spread.

And, now that it’s so easy to use this paste, I may be using chipotles in my cooking more often.

Recipes I’ve used this paste in

I love this simple to make and easily stored seasoning paste. So, I use it in lots of different recipes!

It’s really easy when all you have to do is pull it out of the freezer, microwave it, and scoop out a spoonful.

You’ll find this paste included these recipes:

Slow Cooker Copycat Chipotle Sofritos

Crock Pot Chipotle Bean Dip

Chipotle Vinaigrette Dressing

Crispy Roasted Lentils (oven or Air Fryer)

How to make Chipotle Paste

There’s a printable recipe card a little lower if you want to print it out. Make sure to keep scrolling down.

Note: this section contains affiliate links

Take the whole can for chipotles in adobo sauce and drop the chipotles and sauce in the blender or food processor and puree the whole thing.

You may need to add a little bit of water to get the contents moving freely in the blender.

Then, once it’s all blended together, it’s ready to use in ANY recipe.

That’s all there is to it!

I’ve been using one teaspoon of paste to replace 1 chipotle in recipes, but you may want to play around with it and see if you like more.

Do I need to remove the seeds?

No, lucky for us, this recipe is super easy to make. No chopping, no soaking, no seed removal, and no drying. And, it lasts a nice long time in the freezer.

How do I store this?

For storage, simply keep the paste in a jar with a tight-fitting lid in the fridge.

If you don’t use chipotle that often, store the whole jar in the freezer and defrost the day before you intend to use the paste by placing the jar in the fridge.

It can also be defrosted in the microwave.

Or, place the paste in ice cube trays and freeze for more individual servings.

Once frozen, store the chipotle cubes in a ziptop bag.