Homemade Fresh Salsa Recipe
Tomatoes out of the garden or the farmer’s market … It’s homemade salsa time. Fresh homemade salsa is an easy salsa recipe that has a wonderful flavor. This recipe is a great starting point for multiple variations using fresh seasonal ingredients.
Ingredients
- 6 medium slicing tomatoes or 8 Roma tomatoes (approximately 30 ounces)
- 2 medium onions, diced (white, yellow or Vidalia)
- 3 bell peppers, diced (green, red, yellow or orange)
- 4 jalapenos, diced or ¼ cup diced jalapenos from a jar
- 6-12 sprigs cilantro, finely chopped
- 1 can tomato sauce (15 oz) or tomato paste (6 oz) *optional
- ¼ cup lime juice
- 4 garlic cloves, finely diced or 1 tablespoon garlic powder
- 2 tablespoon onion powder
- 1-2 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar *optional
Instructions
- Dice the tomatoes. Using a vegetable press type of chopper will speed the process, but hand chopping is fine. Don’t chop them too finely.
- Dice the onions a matching size to the tomatoes.
- De-seed and remove the white parts of the peppers. In the photo below, you can see how I cut the pepper, avoiding the natural creases, then snap the pieces off leaving the seed ball behind.
- Trim the resulting pieces by removing the the white part with a small knife and dice the rest.
- Cilantro can be strong, if you are not careful. Pluck the leaves off the main stem and finely chop them up. If you desire more intense cilantro flavor, use the stems or more leaves. It is better to have too little cilantro and add more later if needed.
- When using fresh jalapenos, split the jalapeno, remove the seeds, and white stuff with a spoon. The jalapenos will be hotter the finer you chop them. If even more heat is desired, add the seeds back to the mix.
- Add finely diced garlic cloves (or garlic powder), onion powder, salt, lime juice and optional sugar. If desired, you can vary the amounts of these ingredients either now or after the salsa has been refrigerated.
- Stir the mix and place in a slow cooker or on the stove with a low setting. Let it simmer for an hour or two. Mix often while it simmers. Monitor the moisture level while it cooks. Examine the salsa while it is simmering, if it lacks moisture, add tomato sauce or if it is too soupy, add tomato paste (optional).
- When done simmering, remove from the heat source and allow the salsa to cool to room temperature.
- Once cool, refrigerate for a minimum of one hour. A longer stays in the refrigerator, the better it will taste.
- The flavor can be tweaked at anytime, but as it cools it will be the best time to made additions. If it lacks flavor, add salt. If it is too acidic, add sugar. If you don’t have the cilantro flavor, chop up some more and add it at this time (it may need to rest in the refrigerator for cilantro flavor to fully develop).
Did you try this recipe?Please Let us know how it was!
