Extremely Delicious Salsa

Imagine the flavor of several fresh vegetables, with lime juice, hot peppers, and olive oil.

Hardware

• Blender (capable of high and low)
• Sharp knife (capable of “cutting worth a darn”)
• A bowl, about the size shown in the picture.

Ingredients

Naturally, everything can be varied (except maybe tomatoes). But before you go changing stuff around (even if you dislike onions), make it first with the correct ingredients, so you know what you want to change when you make it a second time.

• Vegetables
• Tomatoes *
• Onion *
• Jalapeño peppers *
• Habanero peppers

• Seasonings
• Salt *
• Black pepper *
• Cilantro (fresh) *
• Dill weed
• Parsley
• Red pepper
• Thyme
• Garlic *
• Lime *
• Light Olive Oil (flavored and/or not) *
• Balsamic Vinegar (not salad! Not white!) *
• Dave’s Insanity Sauce (used only for spice, NOT flavor. Although honestly, I've grown to love the flavor too.)
  

That’s a lot of crap. The starred ingredients are the ones that I will run out to the store to buy, if I don’t have them. Everything else, I fake. (Don’t have any Thyme? Substitute with Sage! Or nothing!) It’s important to note that this whole process takes about an hour to do (I’m faster, but you’ll be slow at first). Since it takes so long, I usually don’t make the salsa unless I have all the ingredients. Ukrops ran out of Habanero peppers once, so I used some out of a can. Besides that, I stick to this recipe.

The Dave’s Insanity Sauce is made with the oil from very spicy peppers; concentrated spice. The only reason I use it, is to give the salsa more of a bite. For most people, leaving it out is best. The salsa tastes better without the Daves’s in it. Dave’s has a lot of strange flavor to it, and tends to make everything it is used in taste a little strange. It is added at the very last step, so you can taste the salsa before you add it. Adding it doesn’t make it taste bad, just different.

Overview

1. Cut up tomatoes
2. Cut up Jalapenos
3. Cut up habanero peppers
4. Cut up onion
5. Shred or cut up fresh cilantro
6. Blend 1/5th of the mixture to make a sauce
7. add olive oils, random spices, salt, pepper to the sauce
8. blend again
9. Add sliced garlic, lime juice, anything else you forgot to add
10. blend again
11. Taste it. Good? Continue. Not good? Add more things.
12. Put in another 1/5th of cut vegetables, and blend slowly, for short time
13. Put in another 1/5th of cut vegetables, and blend slowly, for short time
14. Put in another 1/5th of cut vegetables, and blend slowly, for short time
15. Put in another 1/5th of cut vegetables, and mix all together. Salsa should have varying sizes of vegetables, from blended to big chunks.
16. Make sure no huge chunks exist. Cut any huge pieces with knife.
17. Cover, refrigerate. Best if served the next day, to let the flavors mix.

Step One

Preparing the vegetables.

Tomatoes

You will need about 5 midsized tomatoes (see photo above). It doesn’t matter what kind you get; if you have a preference for tomatoes, go for it. Otherwise, get the cheap kind. I get the kind on the vine (grown only in water, for people who have lots of money) because they smell better, and they are only a few cents more per pound. I wish I had a cheaper grocery around me. I personally prefer the tomatoes to be kinda crunchy and firm. The rest of my family likes them to be mush and gross; the kind that attracts flies. I store them in the refrigerator where they belong. My family stores them on a window sill in the sun, where they rot unless you eat them within a few days.

Cutting the tomatoes is important. I really dislike having the seed/goo part in my salsa. It doesn’t look clean and fresh. So I cut it out. Here is the process, illustrated for your benefit.

Cut down the center.

Cut each half into thirds.

Scoop out the goop.

The goop, scooped. Sorry about the blurr.

Slice each piece in half.

Arrange the pieces together, and cut into chunks.

This is about as much as you should prepare. Roughly 5 tomatoes, as I said. There are a lot of other ingredients, so don’t fill up too much on tomatoes.

Jalapenos

These peppers are green with a sometimes patchy texture on them. They’re suppost to be a spicy pepper, but most of the time I find them to be about the same as a green pepper. Not spicy at all. If I buy the non-spicy kind I only use about 2 of them, just for the crunch. If they’re spicy, I use about 5 of them (or more). I THINK the darker peppers are spicier. I haven’t confirmed that yet. To make it less spicy, remove the seeds. (props to Sherri for the suggestion)

Cut the top off, and slice them into sections, about 4 mm (3/8ths of an inch, or .013123 feet) thick. Cut each slice into 4th’s.

This is about as much as you should have. Throw it into the bowl with the tomatoes (you can mix it now, or later).

Onion

There are about 239487 different kinds of onions at your typical grocery, and you want the sweet kind. Vandalia onions are fantastic if they are in season. Otherwise, just get the big yellow onion that says “sweet onion” on the label. You only need one, and you won’t use all of it.

Cut into slices.

Divide the slices into 4 parts.

Take each part, and slice to make a bunch of “chopped” pieces.

This is about as much as you should have (I sometimes put in about 3/4ths of this). Throw into bowl.

Habanero peppers

These are some spicy peppers. When you buy them in the store, I THINK they are best if they smell like a sweet vegetable of some sort. It’s a very nice smell; not spicy or alarming at all. I’ve seen them both light (as in the picture), and very dark. Both seem to be spicy. I have had somewhat milder peppers before, so you kinda have to see what you get after you get home.

Cut the top off, and slice very thinly. No one wants to get a big crunch of habanero pepper. Very thin please, about 1 mm thick.

This is about how much you could make. It doesn’t change the flavor much. If you want it spicier, by all means add more.

Cilantro

Cilantro is an acquired taste, like beer. The first time I had it, I couldn’t understand why anyone would use it on food. But the more I was forced to eat it, the more addicted I was to the flavor. Mexican salsa uses cilantro, and some salsas use a LOT of cilantro. I like a lot of cilantro, but I also don’t want to cut it and wash it. So I just grab a small bunch of it, ball it up into a ball, and slice it with the knife. If you want to pick off the leaves instead, that would be prettier. I’m lazy and I don’t want to do that.

Here about as much as I like to add. Throw it in the bowl.

Step Two

Making the Sauce

A salsa composed of only big chunks of vegetables would be a huge pain to eat. On the other hand, we don’t want one big puree mess of goo either. We would ideally like to have the big chunks mixed together with small chunks, and a sauce holding them all together.

The first step is to create the sauce. We want to make the sauce exactly the way we want the salsa to taste. Add enough salt until it tastes good. It’s easy to add a dash of Thyme here, a dash of black pepper there, just make the flavor exactly the way you want it. It becomes more difficult after you’ve added all the chunks. So that’s why we start with the sauce.

Add about a 5th of all your vegetables into the blender. I use a Black and Decker “Eugo” (stupid name), which is a cheap blender that doesn’t work very well. The blades don’t quite touch the sides, so thin things can go unblended. Annoying, but okay.

Blend the vegetables on high until it becomes a soup.

Add a few dollops of olive oil. I have a roasted pepper olive oil that is completely useless. I add it because I want to get rid of it, and it makes me feel good to add more ingredients. Add some balsamic vinegar too (a few dollops).

Blend on low to mix it together.

Add your spices. A few dashes of Thyme, pepper, salt, dill weed, parsley, etc is enough. You can always add more. If you accidentally add a little too much of a spice than you think should be added, it won’t really change the taste too much. Continue.

Blend on low to mix it together.

Add lime juice. I use a fresh squeezed lime, because the juice in a bottle seems unfresh. I doubt there is any significant taste difference. I also cut my limes strangely (as you can see), because I think I can get more juice out of them if I make those slits in the lime-half.

Blend on low to mix together.

This is the time to taste it and add what you are missing. I usually need to add more salt here. Sometime I add more red pepper or a random spice. Blend on low to mix, and taste often to test. Keep adding whatever is needed to make it taste good. If you accidentally added waaaaay too much salt (or something), throw the sauce out and try again. You are allowed to mess up once or twice, and you’ll still have enough cut vegetables to finish okay.

After the sauce tastes perfect (or you’re too scared to mess it up), dump in another 1/5th of the cut vegetables. Blend on low for no more than 2 seconds.

Again, add another 1/5th of the vegetables and blend again on low, for no more than 2 seconds. Continue this until almost all the vegetables are left. You should end up with a salsa now, that has some big pieces, some small pieces, and some in between.

You should have about 1/5th of the vegetables left in your bowl. Dump everything from the blender into the bowl, and mix well.

Taste. Add spice or salt and mix, if needed.

Done!

Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge overnight for best taste. You can eat some immediately if you can’t wait; no harm done.

If you make this, please contact me and let me know. I’d be interested in knowing how many people tried this. Also, if you have ideas for making it even better, I’d like to know as well. Enjoy!

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