Growing up in Santa Ana, CA chamoy was a very popular condiment. Local street vendors or Mexican snacks shops would use them on fruit cups (recipe here), chips, gummy candies, pork rinds or chamoyadas. The chamoy everyone uses is a bright vibrant red syrup that comes out of a big bottle – it has a sweet, sour, salty and slightly spicy flavor and it’s mainly made of high fructose corn syrup, citric acid and red food coloring. The bottled version definitely has the most nostalgic flavor, but looking into the history of chamoy, I found out it was originally made with real fruit and even more interesting – some of the ingredients came from Chinese immigrants between the 16th and 19th century. When the Chinese immigrated to Mexico, they brought along dried apricots, tamarind, mango, and see mui (pickled and salted plum). These combined with Mexican chilis is how the flavor profile of chamoy was created. I’m sharing a homemade version I adapted from Ana Frias’ recipe, you can make it with a few ingredients you can pick up at any grocery store – the flavor is incomparable to the mass produced version – it’s so much more delicious and complex – if you’ve had De La Rosa Pulparindo candy, this has a very similar flavor.
Dried Cranberries are an unusual ingredient for chamoy, since Dried Hibiscus Flowers can be a little hard to find cranberries can be substituted because they have a similar flavor profile
Use this homemade chamoy for Mexican Fruit Cups (recipe here)
