What is your Favorite Salsa Recipe?

This is the recipe I have been using for years.  I believe I got this one back when "Secret Recipes" was a big deal on the internet.  I believe this was a Secret Recipe from El Chico:

2 cups tomatoes(either fresh or canned)
1/2 cup onions, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons green chilies, chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vinegar

I mix everything together then I leave it out to ferment overnight.

What is your favorite recipe for Salsa?

It’s the perfect time of year for my favorite salsa, because peaches are ripe and cilantro is just going to seed:

Ripe peaches diced/ mashed (peel them if the skin bothers you)
Minced sweet onion
Minced jalapeño
GREEN  (unripe) cilantro seeds.
Lime juice or vinegar
Salt

Works fresh or canned. All ingredients are “to taste”

Enrique Olvera in his amazing Mexican cookbook Tu Casa Mi Casa wrote:
To understand salsas, grab a frying pan or comal and throw in two tomatoes, a clove of garlic, a fresh chile, and some onion and let them cook. Char them. There are no measurements for how much or how long to cook them for. The salsa will be yours at whatever point you stop charring and decide it is ready. You cannot screw it up. Throw the ingredients in a blender or into a molcajete and add some salt.

This doesn't answer your question, but it tells you why I can't provide an answer. Reading that and the following paragraphs changed my life. I make small batches of salsa guided by this heuristic instead of following recipes. Always chiles, usually tomato or tomatillo, usually cumin seeds, often onion and/or garlic, sometimes other seasonings, sometimes fruit. We're eating through a batch where I used zucchini instead of tomato!

Oh, also, we prefer the texture of salsa ground in the meat-grinder attached to our stand mixer to the blender. Sometimes I use the molcajete to be old-school, but not usually any more.

Mk, I have had peach salsa and it was amazing.

The problem with peach salsa is I usually don't have peaches though I might have tomatoes.

Christopher Weeks wrote:

Enrique Olvera in his amazing Mexican cookbook Tu Casa Mi Casa wrote:
To understand salsas, grab a frying pan or comal and throw in two tomatoes, a clove of garlic, a fresh chile, and some onion and let them cook. Char them. There are no measurements for how much or how long to cook them for. The salsa will be yours at whatever point you stop charring and decide it is ready. You cannot screw it up. Throw the ingredients in a blender or into a molcajete and add some salt.

This doesn't answer your question, but it tells you why I can't provide an answer. Reading that and the following paragraphs changed my life.

Yes!  Salsa is best by feeling!  I have also stumbled onto the best taco shop hot sauce recipe, and its super easy:

1)  Toast some dried, de-seeded Guajillo chile and some dried chile de arbol until fragrant.  The ratio is up to how hot you want it.  
2)  Soak in some very hot water for 20-30 minutes.  I use just enough to cover them.
3)  Put in a blender with a clove or two of raw garlic, some soaking liquid, and some salt.  For extra flavor sub chicken bullion for the salt.
4)  Put that on everything.

Your taco shop hot sauce recipe sounds amazing and so simple to make! It's true, sometimes the best recipes are discovered by experimentation. Have you ever considered trying out different salsa recipes to complement your homemade hot sauce?

Kat Reyes wrote:Your taco shop hot sauce recipe sounds amazing and so simple to make! It's true, sometimes the best recipes are discovered by experimentation. Have you ever considered trying out different salsa recipes to complement your homemade hot sauce?

Yes, but I usually wing salsa by what I'm having it with.  Or what profile I'm hungry for (Red/Green), or what I have growing that needs eating.  Around here if you plant tomatillos once and let some of the fruit get into your compost, then till said compost into your garden, use it around trees, etc.  you WILL have tomatillos forever after. Ask me how I know!  I love 'em so I let them do their thing and make lots of green sauce, chili verde, etc. in the summer/fall

Into the blender, I toss or cram...

- A bunch of cilantro, really however much I've got or can spare
- 1/4 of an onion, roughly chopped
- The meat of 1 avocado
- About a teaspoon of kosher salt
- Either some diluted white vinegar or the juice from a jar of pickled jalapenos, probably about 1/4 cup

- Optional: a tomato if I've got an extra laying around
- Optional: one or more sliced hot peppers, either fresh or pickled is fine, the spicier the better
- Optional: a few dashes of ground hot pepper (e.g. chipotle powder)

- Enough water so that when I blend it all together it is scoopable yet drippy and pourable

This concoction is created just about every time I cook Mexican food so it can be drizzled on top and also served in a small bowl on the side with tortilla chips. It does not disappoint.

Might not count as salsa but I think Hawaiian Chili Pepper Water is under rated outside of Hawaii, such an easy condiment to have in the fridge and so customizable. I can't really give a favorite recipe of it because I try something new each time, basically just start with the standard you would find on google and make it your own with what ingredients you have around you.

Kat Reyes wrote:Your taco shop hot sauce recipe sounds amazing and so simple to make! It's true, sometimes the best recipes are discovered by experimentation. Have you ever considered trying out different salsa recipes to complement your homemade hot sauce?

Maybe even exploring how to make pico de gallo? It could be a fun addition to your culinary adventures! Keep spicing things up!

Hi,  Since you can make peach salsa, you might try cherry, or pineapple, strawberry,etc....  almost any fruit in place of peaches that you like.

I make up a big batch of all my family’s favorite ingredients and then add a teaspoon of sea salt per pint of finished salsa and ferment on the counter for about 4-5 days. After I’m happy with the flavor I combine the small jars into half gallon or gallon jars and put them in the fridge and eat it all year. Delicious and healthy and saves a bunch of money if we were buying salsa! Yummm, might have nachos for dinner tonight!

Nectarines have a brighter flavor than peaches.  I choose nectarines over peaches any time.

In salsa, i just replace tomatoes with chopped tree ripe nectarines.  They don’t need to be peeled.

I add cilantro, onions, garlic, lime juice , (lime zest if you want to up the lime flavor) olive oil, salt, chopped roasted chilis.  I don’t really like the flavor of jalapeños.  I LOVE pablanos.  There are pepper growers that roast them before selling them.  You can buy various varieties from ancho/pablano with no heat to hotter than hot.  You choose your bushel, they roast your chilis take them home and peel and seed them, and freeze them in portions.

So I just grab a chunk of frozen chilies and chop.

It takes a lot of tasting to make salsa just right.  Adjust the heat with finely chopped habanero, or jalapeño or ghost or whatever hot one you have.  If you are using dried cayenne you won’t know how hot it is until you let the cayenne infuse.

Nectarine season is a great time to make Navajo tacos.  Nectarine salsa is perfect with Navajo tacos.

Nectarine salsa is good by itself too, in a bowl, eat it with a spoon or as a salad or side dish.

YUM!  It’s still a few months until nectarine season!

In my culinary world there is only one (veggie) salsa really worth eating. All the others are just spicy ketchup. Tomato, cilantro, onion, garlic, salt, & chili petin pepper. They are tiny but potent. They also add a very distinct flavor. One per large tomato is about right for most people who can handle some heat. Two if you really want to burn! Mush it all up & let sit in the fridge a day or three.

They go by many names. Can buy dried ones in some supermarkets if they have a Mexican section. Those usually go by the name of bird's eye peppers. Wear gloves to handle them. Do not under any circumstances handle them then use the bathroom. You will seriously regret doing that for an hour or more. Learned that the hard way.

Wild turkeys love these but can become too hot to eat if they eat too many.

Youtube has many hilarious videos of people trying them for the first time but here's one that is more informative than funny.

If I wanted to add in tomatillos to my salsa, would they replace a tomato or be added in addition to the tomatoes?

I'm very new to salsa making so of course I want to make it difficult on myself.

I just posted this same recipe on 9.05/2026, guess I forgot:

https://permies.com/t/381594/El-Chico-Salsa

Timothy Norton wrote:If I wanted to add in tomatillos to my salsa, would they replace a tomato or be added in addition to the tomatoes?

I'm very new to salsa making so of course I want to make it difficult on myself. ;)

If I wanted to add tomatillo to salsa, I would make it an addition.  I would want the amount of tomatoes to stay the same and 1/2 cup tomatillo.

Or you could use 1 cup tomato/1cup tomatillo if you really like the flavor of tomatillo.

Do you like the flavor of tomatillos?  Are you going to ferment your salsa?

Anne Miller wrote: Do you like the flavor of tomatillos?  Are you going to ferment your salsa?

Usually when I process my tomatoes into cans, I will also process the tomatillos and blend it all together but that was because I didn't know what else to do with the tomatillos. I'm experimenting with them in new ways and salsa is a very recent one.

I haven't tried a fermented salsa, that I know of, I am going to have to make a batch!

The first part of this video is basically a tomatillo based salsa. But why stop there? Go for the gold. You won't regret it!!!

Timothy Norton wrote:If I wanted to add in tomatillos to my salsa, would they replace a tomato or be added in addition to the tomatoes?

I'm very new to salsa making so of course I want to make it difficult on myself. ;)

I’d replace it and probably use green chiles instead of red.

Salsa is the easiest thing in the world: https://permies.com/t/242478/Heuristic-salsa

Timothy Norton wrote:If I wanted to add in tomatillos to my salsa, would they replace a tomato or be added in addition to the tomatoes?

I'm very new to salsa making so of course I want to make it difficult on myself.

Timothy, let your palate be your guide.  I like tomatillo salsa without tomatoes or other fruit.  Others may like various combinations.

If you’re going to waterbath your salsa, check the pH.  It used to be safe to make tomato salsa and the tomatoes hadvenough acid to cover the onions, garlic and chilies.  We have modern tomato varieties with reduced acid.  Venturing in to peach or nectarine or tomatillo salsa may or may not have adequate acid to acidify the addition of low acid ingredients.  

I bet you’ve seen me say that before, likely already know it anyway.  I imagine people reading as beginning food preservers and storers what we write here and want them to have the warning.

I hope your salsa turns out perfect!

My wife and I have been fortunate to travel a bit, not much but enough to have gotten the travel bug.
We have tried salsa's in everyplace we have gone to.
St Croix, Antigua, Mexico, Costa Rica and Hawaii.
Each place used a lot of local fruits and veggies in their salsa's.
So here at home when we make it, it consists of:   walking through the supermarket.... Oooo, I bet that would be good in salsa and what ever is available from the garden.

All of these, chopped:
10 C tomatoes
5 C green peppers
5 C onions,
2 1/2 C hot peppers
1 1/4C vinegar
3 C tomato sauce
1 C sweet fruit
6 cloves garlic
1 T salt   boil for about 45 minutes, till the liquid content looks right, add in some chili powder, and put in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. I need 24 pints of this for a year's supply...we have it on our omelet every morning and put a spoonful in a taco or burrito...

I've been thinking about this one and... it depends. I can narrow it down to my favorites. My favorites include pico de gallo, 'Cowboy Caviar', mango, peach, salsa verde, and black bean& corn. It all depends on what I'm eating it with and what mood I'm in.