Gather your utensils and best garden produce. It’s time to make some delicious fresh salsa! You’ll need your cutting board and best veggie chopping knife…a nice big wooden spoon for stirring. It’s good to have a garbage bowl handy so grab one of those too.
I cook salsa in a gallon size pan and use a pressure cooker for preserving it in jars.
–Tomatoes (about 7 pounds)
–Onion (1 large)
–Garlic (4 cloves)
–Cilantro (1 bunch)
–Lime juice (1 Tbls)
–Salt (1 tsp)
–Sugar and spices (optional)
–Bell peppers (4 medium) (red, orange, yellow and green)
–Hot chili peppers (4-8) (jalapenos and at least one habanero)
Peel and dice tomatoes. I prefer to use Romas, because they are meatier but any tomato will do. And gosh, don’t remove the seeds unless you can’t eat them. They contain a lot of great tomato flavor.
Dice onion.
Mince garlic.
Chop cilantro.
Dump tomato, onion, garlic and cilantro in your pan with a tablespoon of lime or lemon juice. I prefer the flavor of lime.
Cook over a low to medium heat.
Add any seasonings that you like. I usually only use salt and a tiny bit of sugar, but I’ve also used thyme, cumin, oregano and cinnamon. Use what you like and taste what you make.
Continue cooking.
At this point, it is important to make sure you like the flavor of your salsa. I don’t move ahead with the peppers until I am in love with the flavor of my base.
Dice bell peppers.
I use a variety of bell peppers for color. I like my salsa to be pretty, with nice symmetrical cubes of red, yellow, orange and green peppers. Remove all the seeds. They add nothing in my opinion and they’re ugly. I don’t like them.
Mince hot peppers.
I mince my de-seeded hot peppers in very small pieces. A large bite of habanero might be an unpleasant surprise…might even be dangerous!
Be very careful when working with hot peppers. You definitely don’t want any capsaicin in your eye. You don’t want the hot pepper juice to touch your skin anywhere actually! Use rubber gloves if you’re inexperienced with hot peppers.
Again, add a variety of colors.
Cook over medium low heat for a bit, until your salsa is ready to be eaten and/or preserved in jars. I like mine chunky and leave it like it is. I add it to chili, fried eggs, hamburgers, hot dogs and eat it plain with chips. It’s the best salsa I’ve EVER eaten.
If you like a smoother salsa, use a blender or food processor after the mixture has cooled quite a bit.
¡buen provecho
Another Anonymous Blogging Mom 