Wanted: an awesome salsa recipe

[kentuckiense]

My girlfriend and I have become quite the experts on the cheap Mexican restaurants of Williamsburg and Virginia Beach, Virginia. You know the type of place. Immediately they bring out a basket of chips and a bowl of salsa. What we are after is a recipe that best mimics that classic cheap-Mexican-restaurant salsa. You know, not very chunky, lots of cilantro, etc. We've tried many times and always failed.

Tostitos salsa sucks.

 

[PHRAG]

Well, I hate runny salsa, so this recipe is not what you are looking for. But I am going to post it anyway because it is an AWESOME salsa recipe.

Mix these to your own tastes. This makes a huge bowl, so just cut it in half if you want a smaller amount.

2-3 cans diced tomato
One half a sweet yellow onion, finely chopped
Two jalapeno peppers, de-seeded and finely diced
One avocado, skinned and cut into medium cubes
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, finely chopped

Minced fresh garlic to taste
Salt and Pepper to taste

Make a day in advance and chill before serving with oven warmed tortilla chips.
:drool:

The onion and jalapeno add a nice spice, and the tomato and avocado keep it mellow and sweet. Classic cilantro taste with just the slightest hint of garlic. It doesn't taste like spaghetti sauce. Most salsas lack any garlic and they are poorer for it, IMO.

 

[Heather]

The best red salsa I've ever had was at Los Quates in Albuquerque.

 

[Sue]

Another recipe you don't want (I also disparage your runny-salsa-eating ways):

Dice some tomatoes. Also dice a sweet onion or two. I aim for between a 2:1 and 1:1 ratio of tomato to onion, but normal persons will likely prefer rather closer to 2:1. Chop up a whole bunch of cilantro. Take one or two fresh ears of corn and cut the kernels off the cob. Mix everything together, add salt, ground cumin, and plenty of cayenne.

 

[Marco]

Zach you can always just take the above recipes and instead of dicing tomatoes go puree them and add a whole bunch of chopped pureed cilantro

 

[Heather]

When I make salsa, it's a pretty rough, basic recipe. It is definitely chunky though, not runny (I'm w/ the rest of the crowd on your texture preferences). Similar tomato to onion ratio as Sue suggests, around 2:1.

Good tomatoes (fresh), diced
red onion, minced
lots of minced serrano chiles (or to taste if you aren't a spice lover like me)
fresh chopped cilantro
lots of lime juice
salt.

And, I'd throw an avocado into the mix to make it even better.

 

[Jon in SW Ohio]

Best salsa I ever had was the year my mom grew Tomatillos (Husk Tomatos), have to get the recipe from her, but I think she did it by eye like most of her cooking.

Jon
________
Extreme Q Vaporizer Review

 

[adiaphane]

I say any salsa recipe is greatly improved by the addition of habenero peppers.

 

[Rick]

Need to add some epazote too:drool:

 

[Eric Muehlbauer]

OK....this is what I do...first, take a garlic clove, a fresh red hot pepper (preferably a fresh habanero...but take the flesh out if you are using that one!), a small sweet onion and a handfull of cilantro...along with the juice of half a lime and a tbsn or so of good quality Thai fish sauce...(Yeah, go ahead and use salt if you can't find the stuff...or are chicken....) and maybe a sprinkle of cumin and black pepper.....chuck it all in a food processor, then dump it in a bowl. Next, dice up a nice cucumber, preferable the small seeded middle-eastern type...otherwise a kirby with the phlegm removed.... and two real tomatoes...the kind that look and taste like tomatoes...the kind you have to grow yourself or buy in a farmers market in the summer...if you have to buy supermarket tomatoes, then buy jarred salsa.....nice small dice, say 1 cm diameter.....mix it all up, and you're set to go! For grilled fish, I like to add some pineapple........Take care, and stuff your faces.....Eric

 

[littlefrog]

I make salsa in 20 pound batches... So I don't know how to make just a little. It depends on what I have in the garden.

I seed and dice plum tomatos, and add 50% or so of the volume of tomatoes in sweet peppers. I love peppers, as many different kinds and colors as I have. Pimiento peppers work really well in salsa, for some reason. A few pounds of seeded and chopped jalepeno (I like to wait until they get red on the plant, like a sweet pepper - you never find them that way at the store). A generous amount of diced red or yellow onion, more garlic than i think I need, and usually two or three big bunches of chopped cilantro for a big batch. Sometimes I whirr everything through the food processor, sometimes not, depends on what i want to do. That gets heated on the stove to a simmer, I add some vinegar ( a few cups), and can the salsa in pints in a hot water bath. The vinegar is to get the acidity up for canning, you can leave it out if you are freezing the salsa (which also works, but the texture is better if you freeze the finely chopped salsa).

Mildly spicy, but not scary. If I want scary I add habeneros...

 

[Heather]

So, Rob, what do we have to do to get some of this salsa from you? It sounds great. Perhaps you should put that on your website as well.

 

[littlefrog]

I make just about enough to give some away for gifts and keep me in salsa for a year, not much left over. It takes a long time to make... I'm sure there is some expensive and annoying process to go through in order to sell preserved foods on the internet. Now, giving away a pint with some obscenely large orchid purchase might be legal... *grin*