Easy Chamoy Sauce Recipe

Homemade Chamoy sauce is a thing of beauty. This sweet, salty, sour, spicy sauce is an explosion of flavor and completely addictive. Drizzle over fresh fruit, rim your cocktail glass, heck, eat it with a spoon! I guarantee you’ll find a million and one reasons to make this sauce. Vegan and gluten-free! Watch the 60 second video.

Recipe first posted August 26, 2021. Last updated June 13, 2022.

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If you could wrap the spirit of Mexican cuisine in one food, it would be chamoy.

Chamoy tastes like a fruity chile sauce. It’s salty, spicy, sweet, sour and all of those flavors are at their maximum level. It is exuberant, flashy, and unapologetically bold—basically everything I love about Mexican food.

You most commonly find chamoy sauce served at fruit stands drizzled over fresh mango, watermelon, cucumbers, and jicama. It also graces other sweet street food like paletas (popsicles), raspados (shaved ice), and helados (ice cream).

It has a really interesting history too, let’s take a closer look!

what is chamoy sauce?

Chamoy sauce is a Mexican condiment made from ingredients that represent all the flavors on the palate: Sweet dried apricots, spicy chile de arbol, salty Tajin seasoning, and sour hibiscus flowers.

Where you find Chamoy you also usually find Tajín but they are not the same thing. Tajín is a brand of chili-lime salt and is an ingredient in this Chamoy Sauce recipe. The Tajin brand also makes a mild hot sauce but it is not the same as Chamoy. It is straight up hot sauce, not sweet at all where Chamoy is sweet and sour and spicy and salty. That being said, they also make a Chamoy Sauce but I believe homemade is best.

According to food historian, Rachel Laudan, Chinese immigrants brought sweet, sour snacks made from Prunus mume, a fruit similar to an apricot when they came to Mexico centuries ago. It is the same fruit used to make Japanese umeboshi.

More To Explore

How To Make A Mangonada

11 Delicious Ways To Use Tajín

What Are Flor de Jamaica {Hibiscus Flowers}? Plus 10 Hibiscus Recipes

In Cantonese these snacks were called see mui, pronounced see moy, which eventually became cha-moy in spanish.

Chamoy is also sold as popular Mexican wet or dried plums (wet in the sauce, and dried coated in powder) as well as numerous Mexican candies, but the sauce is my favorite, and the easiest one to make at home!

What is Chamoy Made Of?

There are loads of Mexican chamoy hot sauces you can find at most Latin grocery stores, however, most of them are made of ingredients you can’t pronounce, let alone know what they are.

Lucky for us, chamoy is incredibly easy to make, with less than 10 ingredients. Here’s what you’ll need:

• Dried Flor de Jamaica. Also known as hibiscus flowers, these add that hit of sourness. Look for them in Latin markets or online.
• Dried Fruit. Getting the original Prunus mume fruit is a bit challenging, therefore, we’re going to use sweet dried apricots and raisins instead.
• Chile de árbol. These dried chile peppers add that essential spicy kick.
• Granulated sugar. Here comes the sweet.
• Tajín. This chile powder with dehydrated lime and salt gives us an extra punch of spicy, sour, and salt.
• Lime juice and salt.

how to make chamoy

step one

Simmer fruit. First combine jamaica or dried hibiscus flowers with dried apricots, raisins, árbol chiles, and water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, cover and cook until fruit is softened, about 15 minutes. Let cool.

step two

Blend. Blend in a blender with sugar and Tajín chili powder until very, very smooth.

step three

Strain. Pass this mixture through a sieve to make is pourable and silky (you can skip this step if you want).

step four

Add lime and salt. Mix in lime juice and a bit more salt and that’s it! Taste and add more if desired.

what to serve with chamoy?

• Mangonada {Spicy Mango Slushy} AKA Chamoyadas
• Drizzle over ripe fruits like mango, pineapple, melon, or peaches
• Rim a cocktail glass with chamoy sauce and shake up a Spicy Jalapeño Michelada
• Top cups of Pineapple Soft Serve with chamoy
• Blackberry-Hibiscus Sorbet deserves a dribble of chamoy

more dessert recipes to try!

• No-Churn Cream Cheese Ice Cream
• Classic Ricotta Flan
• Chocolate Chip Coffee Bean Cookies
• Homemade Pistachio Mazapan
• Double Chocolate Brownie Cookies (from our sister site, Kate’s Best Recipes)
• Soft Pumpkin Cookies with Walnuts (again, from Kate’s Best Recipes)
• Mexican Chocolate Sweet Tamales with Hot Honey

be prepared to have your mind blown

If you’ve only ever had the bottled chamoy sauce—or have never had chamoy sauce at all, get ready for an out of body experience. Show me what you put it on by snapping a pic and tagging me on Instagram @holajalapeno and #holajalapeno so I can see or leave me a comment below (don’t forget to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating) ! Also, make sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter, lots of good stuff there too!

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