This Sauce Is Good on Everything

New York Times

6 hours ago

Made with summer fruit and tart seasonings, chamoy is a Mexican condiment that brings a tangy zip to sweet and savory dishes alike. In its sauce form, chamoy is often enjoyed as a dip for crisp, refreshing produce, like jicama, cucumber and watermelon. David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.
By Paola Briseño-González Published Aug. 19, 2025 Updated Aug. 19, 2025
When Gabriella Gonzalez Martinez was a teenager, she would grab chamoy-flavored candy from the tiendita, a corner store up the street from her high school in a Los Angeles suburb. She still felt the pull of its sour-spicy-sweet tang as an adult living in Portland, Ore. Now a pastry chef, she treats the classic Mexican condiment as an invitation to play in the kitchen.
The magic of chamoy lies in its simple yet striking combination of jammy fruits and sour citrus, along with the high acid of vinegar and the subtle heat of dried chiles, usually in the form of a smooth sauce or vibrant red-orange powder. Chamoy is popular in desserts and cocktails: Here, it's the flavor of the icy paleta and those seasonings are echoed in the drink made with orange, tamarind and chile powder. Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times
It's most commonly drizzled over mango, watermelon or other fruit and vegetables, used as a tangy dip for chips, or rimmed on micheladas, and lends itself to new iterations. At Libre, her mezcal and dessert bar, Ms. Gonzalez Martinez makes a strawberry chamoy thick enough to pipe onto pineapple sorbet and mixes chamoy with pickle brine from a local company for a unique version of pickled chamoy. She's one of many chefs and home cooks who've been using the sauce in imaginative ways for years.
That journeying, evolutionary spirit of chamoy is rooted in its origins, which aren't documented clearly but reflect a connection between the Americas and Asia. The word 'chamoy' whispers its Chinese roots from 'suan mei,' the sour plums that were most likely carried to Mexico on the Manila galleons, Spanish trade ships that traveled between the Philippines and Mexico from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Japan's umeboshi offer a striking parallel: Those tangy pickled plums and their electric taste of preserved fruit may have also influenced chamoy's creation.
In Mexico, suan mei took on the bold flavors of local dried chiles, such as guajillo and árbol, and the rich, molasses-like depth of tamarind, a tart fruit native to Africa now found in Mexican candies and aguas frescas. This sweet-sour-spicy-umami blend is prevalent in the singular culinary fusion of Mexicali, Baja California Norte's desert capital. After the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, laborers in the United States originally from the Chinese province of Guangdong relocated to the Mexicali Valley for agricultural and railroad work, leaving a legacy of more than 300 Chinese restaurants today (they outnumber taquerías) and a Chinese-Mexican cuisine that continues to flourish.
The chef Ilean Padilla, a cachanilla (Mexicali native), celebrates this at her restaurant, Mexica Fé, where she weaves cocina del desierto with Cantonese-inspired sweet-sour notes that echo chamoy's. She uses suan mei, also called saladitos Chinos in Mexicali, in dishes like grilled steak aguachile and in cocktails, such as a sour plum reduction with tea, tamarind and coffee. Saladitos Chinos taste like a precursor to modern chamoy with its tangy, salty bite. Locals tuck saladitos Chinos — sometimes coated in salt, sugar, chile or chamoy — into halved oranges, sucking the juicy orange until the orange juice rehydrates the salted, dried fruit. Ms. Padilla thinks that the salted plum and orange snack morphed into chamoy in its sauce form. Chamoy can season cold dishes, like the steak aguachile on the left, and hot ones, like the Cornish hen on the right. Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times
Although store-bought jars of it are easy to find online and in Mexican and other markets, chamoy can be best made at home. Prepared with late-summer stone fruit, like plums and nectarines, it tastes especially thrilling. You simply simmer fresh plums or other stone fruit into a glossy sauce with orange and lime juices to amplify their tartness, along with tamarind. When you make your own, you can adjust the ingredients for more sweetness, tartness or heat until it's exactly the way you like it.
The styles and varieties of chamoy are endless, as are its uses. (Pouring chamoy over raw seafood in ceviche proves its versatility.) Ms. Padilla likes to pair the sauce's brightness with the savory crust of grilled steak and other meats. So does the chef Althea Grey Potter of the French-inspired Bar Nouveau in Portland, Ore. Ms. Potter buys Ms. Gonzalez Martinez's housemade strawberry chamoy and uses it as a glaze for roast duck.
'It is one of my favorite dishes I've had in my life,' Ms. Gonzalez Martinez said.
Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram , Facebook , YouTube , TikTok and Pinterest . Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice .