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Homemade Salsa from Reddit cooking r/cooking u/bunsonh
Ingredients
  • - one 14oz can Muir Glen fire-roasted, **crushed** tomatoes
  • - quarter red onion, finely diced
  • - 1 to 2 cloves of garlic, crushed, smashed, pasted
  • - 6 to 15 sprigs of cilantro, minced
  • - half of a serrano chile, or quarter jalapeño, minced. Seeds in or removed, your call. Add more or less to taste
  • - juice of 1 to 2 limes, depending on juiciness and taste
  • - adequate salt and pepper. Salt, ~1tbsp or more. Pepper, using a grinder, I basically cover the bowl. Appx 1 to 1 ½ tsp
Steps
  1. Mix everything in a bowl, stir, and adjust taste to your favor. I usually find myself adding more chile, lime, or salt.
Notes
  • I make a lot of salsa. My family owned a couple Mexican restaurants, and I'm confident that the red tomato table salsa (what you're describing) was the best I've ever had. Fortunately, I had the honor of making it when I worked there, so I picked up a few tips.
  • You're right. The ingredients are all the same (mostly).
  • - tomato
  • - onion
  • - garlic
  • - cilantro
  • - chile
  • - lime
  • - salt and pepper
  • The trick is to get them in the proper ratios. Over the years since my stint at the restaurant, I have devised a couple tips for making it at home. I'll go through each ingredient individually.
  • - **Tomato** It's all about the tomatoes. I've tried every possible tomato configuration. What I won't use is fresh tomatoes from the produce aisle. The seasonality and lack of consistency makes it hard to nail consistency from batch to batch. My secret is Muir Glen brand canned, fire-roasted, **crushed** tomatoes. They are canned in their prime, roasted to enhance the flavor. And the crushed are less watery than the diced, and have a decent amount of intact tomato to add some chunkiness. I'll often opt to make tomatillo salsa or pico de gallo if this specific canned tomato is unavailable.
  • - **Onion** Speaking of chunkiness, onion. This is what I use to provide texture, instead of the tomato. Since the tomato is mostly crushed, onion gives the texture you might get if you were using fresh tomato. When mixed together, it really doesn't matter. I use red onion exclusively, or white if I can't find red. Yellow onions are just too strong, and to keep the flavor properly balanced, you lose a lot of texture. I cut them between a dice and a mince; pretty fine.
  • - **Garlic** Not much to say about garlic other than *it's totally essential!* To make sure it is in every bite, it gets minced finely, and then crushed with that sliding knife technique all the TV chefs use.
  • - **Cilantro** Don't go overboard. I use as little as just a few sprigs. You want enough to know it's there, but not enough where you really can discern its flavor. It's easy to overdo it.
  • - **Chile** I prefer serrano, but will use jalapeño as a backup. I mince it pretty finely, sometimes with the seeds, sometimes without depending on how hot I want it. It's hard to gauge because spiciness can vary from pepper to pepper, or season to season. To your favor.
  • - **Lime** Try to get limes with smooth skins, a little shinier than the rest, and heavier than it looks. Again, too much can overpower things, too little leaves it tasting flat. To taste.
  • - **S&P** Believe it or not, these two ingredients are as essential to my palate as the tomatoes are. Go heavy on both, but taste as you add so as to not completely overdo it. IMO, too much is better than too little. Be careful, but know that that line is further out than you'd think.
 

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