Every time I make Mexican for dinner I always end up buying salsa, using my mom’s homemade salsa or whipping up some pico de gallo. I have never actually attempted to make my own restaurant style salsa before. The concept seemed easy enough but I think I had the idea in my head that it was going to be time consuming and require cooking. After searching the internet I found a few recipes that sounded easy, didn’t require cooking and had ingredients that I would have also added to a salsa. It only took maybe ½ hour from start to finish but for homemade salsa I think it was definitely worth it!

 Ingredients:

• 1 can (28 oz.) Crushed or diced Tomatoes
• 1 can (4 oz.) green chillies.
• 1/4 cup hand diced sweet yellow onion
• 1 fresh jalapeno, seeded
• 1-2 garlic cloves
• 1 tsp of ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp. salt or to taste.
• 1 tsp cayenne
• 1/4 tsp. sugar
• 1/3 cup cilantro or to taste, chopped, no stems or flat leave Italian parsley or both
• Juice of one lime

Dice onion to the size you like. Cut off the stem end of the jalapeno and then cut the jalapeno in half length wise and take out all the seeds. Cut each halve in half again.  If you like your salsas hot then add more of the membrane that surrounds the seeds. Put all ingredients except the onions into a food processor and pulse until everything in incorporated. Add onions last.

When I was finished making the salsa I decided that I didn’t like the chunks of onion mixed in with blended salsa so I used my hand blender and chopped it up a bit more so the onions weren’t chunky. It tasted pretty good that this point, but I didn’t want to mess with it too much because I knew it was going to taste different tomorrow when the ingredients all meld together.

I was right, the next morning it did taste different and soooo much better. Next time I will try and make salsa the day before I have Mexican food for dinner. The only think I might do different is less cilantro. It’s still really good and not overpowering with cilantro but I think it would taste just a bit better with half the cilantro and add the flat leaf parsley, to maybe a total of 1/4 cup instead of 1/3. Everything else in the recipe is a must and I think it would be bland if you didn’t add everything on the list.