MAKING HOMEMADE SALSA: A SIMPLE RECIPE

Have you been wanting to try your hand at making homemade salsa, but you don’t know how?  Well, you have come to right place!  My grandma is the queen of salsa-making, and I will say that her recipe is vague at best: a little bit of this, a little bit of that.  But it tastes like magic every single time.

I have taken her “recipe of sorts” and combined it with The Pioneer Woman’s salsa recipe, and I have come up with something that tastes great!  All of my kids LOVE this and it gets eaten quickly in my house.

The recipe is a “suggestion” of sorts, and you can customize the ingredients to make it your own.

Feel free to play around with it til you love it!  You will soon become a pro at making homemade salsa!

Gather these ingredients:

1 large can whole tomatoes (28 oz), 2 cans Rotel Original (10 oz each), 1-2 jalapenos, 1/2 large onion, 4 garlic cloves, a handful of cilantro leaves (1/4 cup), 1/2 lime juiced, 1/2 tsp sugar, 2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, 1/2 tsp cumin.

Now, this is where I am gonna tell you to have some fun and make it your own.  I like to use red onion with lime juice sometimes, other times I use white onion with lemon juice.  I use lots of garlic and I always add a decent amount of salt.  Technically I add twice the amount of salt listed above, but I wanted to leave it to you to taste it as you go. Once you have too much salt, there is no turning back.  I generally use enough onion to equal about 1 cup, and I use at least one jalapeno…usually I use 1-1/2, but it depends on the heat I am looking for.  Again, once you add too much, there is no turning back.

I use my 12-cup food processor to make this.  It chops everything wonderfully and keeps the mess to a minimum.

First I add the jalapeno, onion, garlic and cilantro. Pulse until you have your desired consistency.  This is what I go for:

Nicely chopped, but not mushy at all.

Now add your tomatoes, seasonings and lime or lemon juice.  Pulse until desired consistency.  This will be to your liking: some people like big chunks, some like very small.  I think I am somewhere in the middle.

When you taste the salsa, dip it up with a chip.  That way you can gauge your salt well.  Add things according to your family’s taste.

This salsa is best when it is left in the fridge for at least one hour.  It will last several days, but I doubt it will be left uneaten for that long!

I hope you enjoy my making homemade salsa and I would love to know if you try the recipe out!

Happy day, friends!