Easy Homemade Salsa Recipe
My homemade salsa recipe is rich in flavor and takes 5 minutes to make! A few key ingredients to make the best flavor are fire roasted tomatoes, seasoning, fresh cilantro, and fresh lime juice, all blended together to make an incredibly delicious restaurant-style salsa.
In Mexico, this salsa is known as salsa roja (red sauce) or salsa de mesa (table sauce). “Salsa” literally means sauce. You will find it in every Mexican restaurant served before dinner with warm fried tortilla chips. It’s incredibly addicting!
I love to pack my salsa with as much flavor as possible to every ingredient has a thought behind it. And of course, fresh ingredients will bring the best and brightest flavor! It’s a great restaurant-style salsa recipe that’s always been a crowd pleaser.
And if you really want to impress your friends and family, serve it with homemade tortilla chips (I made sure sure include instructions) and some salsa verde, queso, and corn salsa too. There’s no such thing as too much salsa!
Tips For Ingredients and Adjustments
- Fire Roasted Canned Tomatoes – If you need to use plain canned tomatoes, that will also work, but your salsa won’t be quite as flavorful. The fire roasted tomatoes really bring something special!
- Jalapeños – Use fresh jalapeños and you can adjust the spice level just by choose older or younger jalapenos. Young jalapenos are less spicy and they have smooth, deep green skin. Older jalapenos get spicier as they age and they will have brown veins running along the skin. The more veins, the spicier the jalapeno. You can also discard jalapeno seeds if you want less spice of leave them in for more spice.
- Make it More Spicy – Jalapeños are a pretty mild chili pepper, so you can use spicier peppers, like habanero or serrano. You can also add a little more chili powder or add a pinch of cayenne pepper.
- Cilantro – you can’t really substitute cilantro. It’s a very specific flavor. If you are not a fan, you can try to omit it and maybe add a little more cumin.
How to Make Tortilla Chips
- This is totally optional, but you’ll love the full restaurant experience at home!
- To fry the chips: Use small taco corn tortillas and cut them into quarters. Preheat about 2 cups of oil in a skillet until it reaches 350°F. Set a wire rack inside a baking sheet and cover it with a paper towels to catch excess oil.
- Add a few chips at a time to the oil and fry tortillas for a couple of minutes, until golden and crispy, flipping them half way through. Make sure to use metal tongs or metal spatula.
- To bake them: Spread cut tortillas on a large metal baking sheet. Preheat the oven to 350°F and bake them for 5-6 minutes. Flip each tortilla chip and bake another 6-8 minutes.
Using Fresh Tomatoes Instead Of Canned in Salsa
- I prefer using canned tomatoes over fresh because it gives the salsa flavor that is closest to one served at restaurants. It’s a deeper, richer tomato flavor and it will last a lot longer in the refrigerator.
- While fresh is great for Pico de Gallo, if you want that Mexican style restaurant flavor, use canned tomatoes.
- However, if you really want to use fresh tomatoes, it’s possible! You can use fresh tomatoes and simmer the salsa with a little cooking oil for about 15 minutes to get similar flavor. Using just fresh tomatoes, won’t give you this exact flavor though. If you want to use fresh, use about 1.25-1.5 lbs. of fresh Roma or San Marzano tomatoes for best results.
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Homemade Salsa Recipe
My homemade salsa recipe is rich in flavor and takes 5 minutes to make! A few key ingredients to make the best flavor are fire roasted tomatoes, seasoning, fresh cilantro, and fresh lime juice, all blended together to make an incredibly delicious restaurant-style salsa.
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Servings: 8
Calories: 33kcal
Ingredients
- 28 oz fire roasted canned tomatoes
- 1/2 medium white onion
- 2 jalapeno peppers
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 lime – juice only
- 1/3 cup fresh cilantro
- 1/2 tsp white granulated sugar
- 1 tsp salt more or less to taste
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1/2 tsp chipotle chili powder more or less to taste
Instructions
- Combine all the ingredients in a blender and pulse a few times until it's blended to small, coarse chunks. Don't make it too chunky because you don't' want to bite into a big piece of garlic or jalapeno.
- Serve right away to transfer into a glass jar with a lid and refrigerate.
Cooking Tortilla Chips (Optional):
- Frying: Use small taco corn tortillas and cut them into quarters. Preheat about 2 cups of oil in a skillet until it reaches 350°F. Set a wire rack inside a baking sheet and cover it with a paper towels to catch excess oil. Fry the tortilla pieces a few at a time, for a couple of minutes, until golden and crispy. Make sure to flip them half way through. Make sure to use metal tongs or metal spatula.
- Baking: Spread cut tortillas on a large metal baking sheet. Preheat the oven to 350°F and bake them for 5-6 minutes. Flip each tortilla chip and bake another 6-8 minutes.
Video
Notes
- Need To Use Fresh Tomatoes? While canned tomatoes will give you the best restaurant style salsa and is easier, you can still use fresh tomatoes if you prefer. You can use fresh tomatoes in this recipe and simmer the blended salsa with a little cooking oil for about 15 minutes to get similar flavor. Use about 1.25-1.5 lbs. of fresh Roma or San Marzano tomatoes for best results.
- Make It Spicier: Jalapeños are a pretty mild chili pepper, so you can use spicier peppers. Older jalapeños are also spicier than younger ones, and you can tell the older ones by the veins on their skin. Younger jalapeños have smooth green skin and older have dry veins running on the skin. The older the jalapeño, the more veins it has, and the spicier it will be! You can also leave the seeds of the chili pepper in to get much more spice.
- Storing: Store homemade salsa in the refrigerator, in an air-tight glass container, for up to a week.
- Freezing: you can freeze salsa but note that the texture will a slightly different when thawed. Transfer blended salsa into the zip-tip freezer storage bag or portion it into several bags. Lay them on a cutting board and freeze. Once frozen, you can easily stack them.
Nutrition
Calories: 33kcal | Carbohydrates: 7g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 0.1g | Saturated Fat: 0.02g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.03g | Monounsaturated Fat: 0.04g | Sodium: 447mg | Potassium: 41mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 3g | Vitamin A: 524IU | Vitamin C: 9mg | Calcium: 39mg | Iron: 1mg
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Originally published on Will Cook For Smiles in April 2021.
Categories:
Appetizer Recipes, Cinco de Mayo Recipes, Dip Recipes, Gluten Free Recipes, Mexican and Tex-Mex Recipes, Most Popular Recipes, Super Bowl Recipes,All images and text ©Lyubov Brooke for ©Will Cook For Smiles. Please do not use my images without prior permission. If using my posts in collections and features, please link back to this post for the recipe.
Disclaimer: Nutrition information shown is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate as most ingredients and brands have variations.
WILL ROTEL WORK INSTEAD OF FIRE ROASTED?
No, it would have a much different flavor since Rotel has other ingredients as well.
This is really tasty! I live in Arizona so we get a lot of good salsa and this one measures up. Couldn’t be any easier. I halved the recipe and my husband said I should have made the whole batch!
I LOVE salsa thankyou for thé recipe⚘❤