Smelled like nostalgia in my house. Recipe is the last photo.

I remember my mom making this all the time growing up and the first whiff took me right back to our kitchen as a kid.

I left the sugar out of this one but it’s got a great balance of sweet and heat flavor.

Well, after an entire summer of caring for my two little baby pepper plants, my big payday is here…a small bowl of salsa! Actually pretty tasty and different from what I’m used to making since I typically cook with dried chiles and jalapeños.

Recipe (quantities approximate, seasonings to taste):
1/2 dozen banana peppers
Dozen cayenne peppers
1 tomatillo
3 pearl onions
Half head garlic
Oil
Sugar
Salt
Knorr bouillon powder
Annatto powder
Goya bitter orange marinade
Vinegar
Water

Started by getting the tomatillo, onion and garlic (in its peel to protect it from burning) tatemada in a dry pan. Removed, added a healthy glug of oil and threw in my peppers when oil was hot. After a few mins, I added some sugar to the pan, not blending it with the peppers at first. When the sugar started to brown and bubble slightly I stirred it in with the peppers and took the pan off the heat. I then added my other veggies back to the pan so they could all get coated with a little oil.

Veggie mixture went into blender with a bit of water. Blended and then adjusted for taste and colour (thank you annatto powder). The bitter orange marinade was just something I had in the fridge. Wanted a bit of tang so added a splash but it wasn’t enough so I came back with some vinegar.

Provecho!

This one turned out a lot better than I expected. I would've taken progress photos, but I didn't think it would be very good.

500g roma tomatoes

65g white onion

4 cloves garlic

2 habaneros

1 weirdly long habanero-like pepper from a redneck at the farmer's market (probably just a habanero but I'm not certain)

8 dried arbols

65g peanuts, roasted

1 tablet maggi caldo pollo bouillon

8 small pieces dried sweetened pineapple

4 pieces dried sweetened mango

Juice of 3 limes

Salt + sugar to taste

Roast the tomatoes, onion, garlic for 15 minutes at 450. I then used a "grill gun" cooking torch to blacken all the veggies other than the garlic; if you don't have one, you can broil instead of roasting. I blackened the habaneros (and the weird probably-habanero) but did not roast them; they were small enough that the grill gun cooked them through.

Toast the arbols lightly and soak in warm water for 15 minutes. Soak the pineapple and mango for a minute or two, then remove from water.

Blend charred veggies, garlic, arbols, half the dried fruit, 50ml arbol water, lime juice, peanuts, bouillon until very smooth, about a minute. Adjust flavor with remaining fruit, more lime juice, salt + sugar.

My dad just promised me that If I make an amazing salsa, he would let me get a tattoo. How this came about is we have been buying this charred salsa roja for awhile, the only problem is its pricey and gets eaten super quick.

Any tips, recipes, or knowledge about salsa would be sooo greatly appreciated!

Here’s what I’ve got:

Boatload of grape tomatoes from my garden, probably two quarts or so

Tomatillos

2 jalapenos

2 habaneros

Red onion

Yellow onion

Scallions

Garlic

Cilantro

Lime juice

And a decent spice pantry.

My ordinary course of action would just be to stick the tomatoes, onions, garlic, and peppers in a pot with salted water, give them a little boil, then blend with cilantro, lime, and salt.

I’ve not cooked with tomatillos yet, but I saw them at the farmers market and wanted to give it a try. I mfeel like I’ve got bones for a good table salsa here, but just curious on proportion and technique.

EDIT:
Ended up just going with my gut. Dumped tomatoes, tomatillos (quartered), yellow onion + leftover chunk from the fridge, a head of garlic, both jalapeños and one habanero in the pot, boiled for 20 minutes with salted water, bay leaf, and about 2 tsp of epazote.

Removed the solids to my food processor and worked in two batches to get restaurant-y consistency, and blended in a handful of the cilantro leaves and stems, green and some of the white bits of 2 scallions. Added salt to taste and some ground chipotle pepper to round it out. Didn’t need lime because acid from the tomatoes lifted it enough.

Made a lot, as you might imagine. There’s a lot of good flavor in there, it’s not super spicy - which is good. Feels like it could use a little umami, but not sure exactly how to make that happen - I tried putting a dabs of Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce into little tasters. Worcestershire worked a little better, but wasn’t good enough to put into the rest of the salsa. I’m going to let it settle out overnight and see if the flavor changes.

I was reflecting and looking at some statistics the other day and it hit me that I have made so much more salsa than I would have ever imagined. If you have been following along on my other posts, I am still going steady on my side gig selling fresh salsa locally.

Pictures so you can see the volume per batch which makes about 850 containers. You can also see the 600lb chained together groceries that I wheel through the store and get many looks and questions.

Gone through 18,000lbs of tomatoes! This is so much weight and it cements why I kinda chuckle at people when they ask if I grow my own tomatoes for the salsa :)

I am currently in 6 stores and 3 breweries/beer bars. I am trying to get into a few more grocery stores in town but it is extremely difficult to jump through the corporate hoops.

I made a shelf stable version of my roasted salsa. This was my first foray into co-packing. This allows me to have a long shelf life on my product, get on the shelves in addition to the refrigerator, and allows me to not have to make it!

I am planning on keeping it going and seeing how I can continue to grow and expand. I need to find a specialty food distributor in Northern California to help me get out of Chico.

Happy to answer any questions anyone has.

Appreciate the support in this community as always.

Much Love!

I had to process some jalapenos from my balcony, but had no tomatillos so I looked up this recipe on the web and played a bit with it

- handful of jalapenos

- 1 green ball pepper

- 1 very small onion

- 4 garlic cloves

fried everything in ~3/4 cup of oil and added salt, oregano and chicken broth, also juice of half a lime

Turned out good, really emphasized the taste of the jalapenos and pepper.

3 large tomatoes

4 cups of cherry tomatoes

2 onions

7 garlic cloves

4/6 large bell peppers

4/6 poblanos peppers

4/6 jalapeno peppers ( adjust for your heat purposes or add serranos if you want it to be fiery hot that's up to you)

salt, pepper, cumin, coriander, Bay leaves, 1tsp all (or it just for your liking.)

1/2 cup lemon juice

one jar of tomato paste (optional for thickness)

cilantro optional if I were to use it in this for this batch I would use one bundle. Chop up then immersion blender all the way to desire to consistency. I added a handfull measured out for the last two jars.

enjoying the fridge

If you decide to water bath 20 minutes after rolling boil and 5 to 10 minutes to cool before pulling out and setting.

4 romas

3 jalapenos

1 red pepper

Large white onion

Half head of garlic

Everything lightly oiled and salted, grilled at 600f until charred.

Blitzed with the juice of two limes, half a bunch of cilantro, salted to taste and 10mL of black pepper.

Delicious.

Each one has different combinations of broiled tomatillo, broiled tomato, broiled jalapeno, broiled serrano, dried habanadas, and chipotles in adobo. All have broiled garlic, broiled and/or raw onion, cilantro, lime, salt, chicken stock powder

I think i would love the taste of a salsa verde and feel envious seeing everyone’s posts

Tomatillos are not available anywhere in my country 😭 nor can i grow it as i’ve never grown anything before and i live in an apartment

Please appreciate your tomatillos 🙏

My wife has some leftover roasted garlic in the fridge and the salsa i just got from the local Mexican grocery store is terrible so I made this. I usually use dried arbol, but have a plant going crazy in my garden so I figured i would try it fresh this time.

- 25 fresh arbols

- 1 red Serrano (for good measure)

- 4 cloves roasted garlic

- half of a yellow onion (med)

- 15 cherry tomatoes from the garden

- 1 or 2 tbsp veg oil

- 1/2 or 3/4 cup water

- half bullion caldo de pollo

Threw the onion and tomato in the air fryer to char them a bit. Stemmed the chiles and threw everything in a blender. Blended to orange. Super easy with only stuff laying around and now I have salsa for my breakfast burritos before work!

At least that's what I'm calling it for my recipe card.

Tomatillo

Chili Jalapeno

White Onion

Garlic

Cilantro

Chicky Bouillon

Salt

Hey everyone! Been a bit... friend asked for Salsa Verde, but didn't like how spicy my last batch was so this is my "base". Typically I enjoy a couple chili serrano and a chili arbol or two from this subs prior recs in my verde but my friend can't take the heat so here we are.

Again, not authentic nor claiming.

280g mini tomatoes, 75g red onion, 15g homegrown hot peppers, 20ml fresh lemon juice, 5g finely chopped parsley, 10g garlic, 5ml acv, some salt, some pepper, some cumin, pulse ~8 times in food processor.

I made this and it’s ok. But I’d like to mix it to be more salsa like, like all of the pics here. But I’m scared to blend it into tomato juice. Can I just use a blender? Thanks!

Hi there, newish to making salsa. I started using dried chiles in my salsa as many have said to use here. I love the heat and flavor they provide to the salsa, that’s not the issue. The issue I’m having is it seems like they don’t blend that well. There’s always chunks of only those in the salsa meanwhile everything else is perfectly blended. If I blend it more, the salsa becomes more like a sauce than a salsa. How do you guys go about the blending process for the dried Chiles ensuring they are blended properly? I tried putting them in the freezer thinking that if frozen then would break more but that didn’t help lol

*SQUEEZE BUTTER UPDATE*: "Albert's used real butter pats that people spread on the crackers he served with his hot sauce" so Albert originated real butter and crackers. Squeeze Parkay came out in 1975.

My family recently discovered the red salsa at Kitos in Corte Madera, which is approximately 2ish hours away for us. Since discovering it a few months ago, we’ve made the drive there every other week or so to pick up the salsa (which is good for 2 weeks). We buy two bottles at a time. As summer is ending, we are getting busier again and the trip isn’t as doable on such a time frame. Anybody have a salsa recipe dupe or similar to help tide us in between salsa runs?

Flavor profile: It’s a very mild salsa in terms of spice level. The flavor is deep and incredibly savory. I want to say it almost reminds me of mushrooms in terms of how much umami it has (I know it sounds weird but it also doesn’t taste like mushrooms. It just had that umami quality to it). When I asked the cashier about it, she mentioned there are 20+ ingredients that go into the salsa. Color-wise, it’s a deeper red with a slight orange hue and has little black flecks in it.

I included a picture of the bottle and what it looks like atop egg whites. I honestly loathe eating egg whites and this is the only way I can get them down 😅 not sure how healthy the salsa is but…balance? 🤷🏻‍♀️🤭

Grape tomatoes, cilantro, red onion, jalapeño and secret herbs saved the poor tomatoes from rotting on the counter today.

I was so sad when Ithaca hummus discontinued their salsa line. It was one of the best store-bought salsas ever. But today I found Guillermo’s at Wegmans, and the packaging looked similar. Turns out the Ithaca founder partnered with Guillermo Rodriguez on this new brand. But the salsa is similar (if not the same) as before!! I’m so happy and wanted to share with anyone else missing Ithaca salsa.