Kinna’s Kitchen

Where Laos Melds with New Mexico

By Sophie Putka
Photos by Allison Ramirez

Kinna’s Vegan Chile Paste.

Nearly twenty years ago, Kinna Perez and her husband, Manuel Perez, struck a deal. Really, it was more of a dare. If he could successfully re-create her mother’s signature Laotian chile paste in their home kitchen in Taylor Ranch, Albuquerque, Kinna would agree to turn it into a business with him.

Manuel Perez had fallen in love—first with the woman, then with the sauce her mother made from scratch with a mortar and pestle and kept on the table to accompany each meal. Even these days, he polishes off a jar within two days. Kinna had learned to make the sauce from her mother as a teen, and Manuel had watched Kinna make it for family many times. But when he suggested actually packaging and selling it, Manuel recalls his wife saying, “Are you crazy? That’s too hard.”

He told her, “‘Well, let me try, and if I have a hard time, I’ll forget about it.’” Hours later, he emerged from a messy kitchen to give her a taste. Kinna’s verdict? “It came out good.” With the test passed, his wife agreed to start Kinna’s Kitchen with him, a project they’d build together through more trial and error.

Preparing the sweet, spicy, deep red-brown, and complex sauce wasn’t for the faint of heart. At the beginning, Kinna asked her mother for advice, tweaking the recipe until it had almost reached its final form. The couple eventually added rice vinegar—and swapped in New Mexico red chile.

It remains a from-scratch endeavor for the Perezes, who refuse to take shortcuts on quality for the sake of speeding up sales. Every month or so, Manuel and Kinna process the sauce in small batches in a shared church kitchen in Albuquerque. “Only three cases at a time,” Kinna says.

Kinna’s Laos Chile Paste begins with fresh ginger, garlic, and red onion, deep fried in rice oil. The Perezes toast New Mexico red chiles from Bosque Farms, mix everything with cane sugar, Squid Brand fish sauce, and rice vinegar, then reduce and blend the mixture to a smooth, paste-like consistency that packs a big punch.

The original chile paste is spicy and complex, with just enough sweetness to make it habit-forming. Kinna’s vegan version omits the fish sauce and swaps in shallots for red onion. Her mango salsa combines habanero, bell pepper, and jalapeño with chunks of the sweet fruit, yielding a satisfyingly light, yet layered, texture packed with fruity, fiery flavor. Everything that can be is purchased fresh for their lineup of four products: Laos chile paste, a vegan version that came later, mango salsa, and the most recent addition, a bright tamarind chile sauce.

Ingredients for mango salsa and mango salsa cooking.

If you ask Kinna, the classic sauce makes the perfect accompaniment to sticky rice, meat, and steamed vegetables. Kinna drops it in soup, and uses the tamarind sauce as a marinade or blends it into salad dressing. One regular customer mixes it with peanut butter for an improvised spring roll dipping sauce.

The couple’s commitment to fresh ingredients is unwavering, although they’ve transitioned to frozen mango. Without stabilizers or thickeners, calibrating the acidity to food-safe standards is a balancing act, and a bigger volume of fresh ingredients must be added to get the consistency of their sauces just so.

According to Kinna, chiles from New Mexico weren’t always in the picture. They’re nowhere near as spicy as Thai chiles, Kinna says. But, she says of the red chile they use, “I love it.”

The marrying of a Laotian tradition with New Mexican flavors is a natural fit. Manuel met Kinna years ago while both were working at a jewelry manufacturer (“She used to reject all my work,” he recounts, smiling). Together, they’ve raised three children, who are nearly all out of the house themselves. Manuel and Kinna started the business as a weekend hobby when both were still working. A few years later, when Kinna took maternity leave, she finally had more time to give to the business. She jokes that she’s been on leave since her sixteen-year-old was born.

But the pair are adamant: although their youngest helps out with markets in his spare time, their children shouldn’t take over the family business. “You know, it’s hard work,” Kinna says. “If he can do it, that’s fine. But I want him to get his own dream.”

At one recent Downtown Growers’ Market, curious market goers and regulars alike approached Kinna’s table, where she handed out sample crackers with a swipe of cream cheese and the chile sauce on top. She passed around tamarind sauce on tortilla chips. The week before, they had nearly sold out.

“My day is really long,” she tells me later. By the time she was packing up the truck after the market, she says, “I felt like my body got turned upside down.”

But for now, the endeavor is worth it. The pair love cooking for their friends and sharing the sauces in unexpected places. After their son’s friend from volleyball tried the mango salsa, the friend’s family has been ordering a case for their weekly taco night each time a new batch is made. The Perezes brought the mango salsa, with a basket of sticky rice, to friends at the Cañoncito (To’Hajiilee) reservation who had given them some beef from a freshly slaughtered cow. Other friends, who spend time near Florida and the Bahamas, spoon it over their freshly caught fish.

At eighty-four, even Kinna’s mother approves, despite the milder chiles in the New Mexican version of her original recipe. She doesn’t make her own sauce anymore, but when the Perezes produce a new batch, she sometimes asks Kinna to bring her some to eat with sticky rice.

505-554-4721, kinnaskitchen.com