My First Salsa

Here's a really simple and wonderful tasting restaurant-style salsa recipe. it pairs perfectly with tortilla chips or as a topping over your favorite Mexican style food.

My San Marzano sauce tomatoes were coming in like mad and I had already run out of freezer space, so I had to make something with them. I have bags of sauce so I decided to make salsa.

 I had all the ingredients but the cilantro, so I picked it up locally and found my recipe.

I started by gutting the tomatoes and removing the seeds. First, I found out that it matters which way you slice the tomato. I always chop off the stem end instead of coring it. When you look down at the top, look for an oblong greenish mark. You want to cut across that mark to easily expose the seeds and center.

Notice the cut mark that I made in the example above and notice that the tomatoes on the left are harder to scoop out because you can't get to the seeds as easily. 

The examples on the right or easily scooped out with a teaspoon. I saved these seeds and guts because they go into my sauce and I remove the seeds before cooking anyway. 

For this recipe, we want diced tomatoes, so I simply cut them up right from the haves and put them into a bowl until I have about two cups of fresh diced tomatoes ready to go.

 If you don't have fresh tomatoes, you can certainly substitute canned diced tomatoes but remove all the liquid. 

Let's look at the recipe ingredients:

Two cups of freshly cut diced tomatoes

1/4 cup of finely chopped red onion

1/4 cup of finely chopped yellow onion

One clove of garlic minced.

One jalapeno pepper finely chopped. (I didn't use the guts or the seeds but I wish I had. I ended up later adding heat to it.)

2 tbs of lime juice

2 tbs of freshly chopped cilantro. (Don't omit this, it ties the taste together with everything else.)

1 tsp ground cumin

1/4 tsp salt 

Start by combining the tomatoes, the red and yellow onions, the chilis or jalapeno pepper, lime juice,  cilantro garlic,  cumin, and salt in a bowl and mix thoroughly. Transfer the mixture to your favorite food processor.

The trick here is not to mash everything into a pulp but pulse your food processor just enough until the mixture is well mixed but still chunky. I love my Hamilton Beach processor, it has all the power and capacity I need.

Transfer the mixture back into your bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour preferably longer.

You can certainly modify this recipe to your taste. As I mentioned above, I omitted the seeds from the jalapeno and it came out milder than mild.

The beauty of this recipe is in the nutrition. 

With only 11 calories per serving and this recipe makes 12 servings it has no fat, no cholesterol, and very few carbs. 

As I said, without the heat I needed to add some.
I made some mild, medium and hot with my
different hot sauces for those with a preference Next time I will use the seeds from the jalapenos.

Later on, when my raspberries were coming in hot and heavy, I was looking for another recipe to use them and I ended up making tomato-raspberry salsa.

The consistency was a little bit watery but after time in the refrigerator it came out great. Don't be afraid to experiment once in a while. You might be surprised and delighted with the results.


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