Ranchero Sauce

I live in Austin, Texas and there are many Mexican and Tex Mex restaurants in the area. All of them offer the standard Mexican sauces like red and green salsa and Pico de Gallo. They wouldn't survive here long if they didn't. For those who consider themselves connoisseurs there is a "Hot Sauce" competition somewhere in Texas every month. We Texans love it hot. The cookbooks and the Internet are full of recipes for these salsas. But one of the sauces that is often overlooked in favor of its more popular cousins is "Ranchero Sauce". Ranchero sauce is not the same as salsa. Both are cooked sauces and both use similar ingredents, but they are not similar in taste. Salsa's feature a strong tomato taste, ranchero sauce has more onion flavor. According to Rick Bayless, you can almost bet that anything ranchero or "a la ranchera" will come in a coarse, picante tomato sauce-what you might expect for "ranch" style. The picante can be little serranos (or habaneros in Yucatn), dried chiles de rbol, even chipotles or long green chiles-whatever happens to be the regional choice or the find of the moment. Ranchero sauce is primarily used as a sauce for southwestern egg entrees like huevos rancheros and some omelets. I have found however that a good ranchero sauce can also be used at lunchtime, for example as a sauce for fried green tomatoes, and at dinnertime, as a sauce for meat loaf.