Salsa means very different things depending on where you’re standing on the planet. I’ll focus on the Americas to simplify the discussion but know that it finds its way onto tables across the rest of the globe just as often thanks to new found salsa popularity beyond its native lands. Outside the decades-old wisdom of the dusty roadside taqueria, the broader food world is finally discovering that they’re not just for tortilla chip dipping. You’re just as likely to find an array of these zippy sauces offered table side in London and Seoul these days. And yes, you heard me. I said ‘sauces’ because they’re every bit as valid as French bechamel or Chinese gung bao when it comes to finishing a dish. Hundreds of permutations far beyond basic tomatoes and peppers have real food history to them and it’s about time that salsas got the respect they’ve earned, spoon by spoon.
In ‘North’ North America salsa can mean a bright blended mix of chiles and onions put on freshly grilled tacos at a local stand on a Colorado street corner. Or it can mean a chunky pico de gallo made at home with tomatoes and coriander leaf picked moments earlier in the garden. Sadly, it can also mean pale jars of industrially processed dipping fodder for an insatiable snack food industry. The latter is typically cooked to death in the process of getting it to a shelf stable marketplace and despite countless ‘gourmet’ attempts, I’ve never found a jarred salsa that can hold a flavour candle to something freshly made at home.
In Latin America, notably Mexico proper, salsa becomes an art form. Every street vendor in Oaxaca, every commonplace cantina in Baja, and every upscale restaurant in Mexico City will have several salsas to choose from with your meal. Tacos to tortas, there will be salsa of several makes available to you because not having them would simply be unthinkable in a Mexican kitchen. Usually made on premises daily, they are unique signatures that vary from door to door and a meal isn’t a meal unless you have an array of salsas from which to choose. Tomato rich versions will certainly look the most familiar to northern neighbours but tart green tomatillos, roasted garlic and nopales, creamy rich avocados, and even toasted pumpkin seeds can form the base for the vast selections of salsa made in every nook and cranny of Mexico.
Before you can fly you need to build a runway so I’ll pull back to a familiar tomato and chile based starter recipe. Only gently cooked to bring the components together and then chilled completely, it makes use of the misunderstood hot end of the chile spectrum. Once you get past the testosterone-fuelled Billy Joe Bob factor that simply wants to burn their tongues with the latest Scoville scale bragging rights, there are amazing flavours to be had if you can tame the beast of hotter chiles into submission.
In an oddity of Canadian winter produce supply, we can get decent habanero peppers from Quebec greenhouses up here year round. Other exotic fresh chiles and quality tomatoes are much more rare when the thermometer takes a dive. I set out on a quest to make a flavourful salsa that could be reproduced easily over the bulk of the calendar year even up here in a snowy produce wasteland and this is what I ended up with after quite a few failed batches. It’s all about the sweet/sour balance and a few pantry tricks to evoke summer thoughts.
After a few tries with rather pricey cherry tomatoes and ‘premium’ varieties of other fresh sorts imported from who knows where around the planet, I found that using ordinary canned tomatoes helps level the playing field in the dead of winter. The quality brands are packed at the peak of flavour back in summer for your late year convenience. Draining them of the liquid they’re packed in keeps the finished results tasting more like salsa and less like ‘tomato soup’. Using tinned tomatoes necessitates this be a ‘cooked’ salsa for the best taste but the habaneros and lime seem to brighten up the whole affair beyond the pale as long as cooking is brief and gentle warming instead of extended simmering. The sugar and vinegar balance rounds out what can sometimes be an otherwise flat flavour profile and simulate a bit of that ‘garden fresh’ angle lost to us nine months of the year in the north. A noticeably absent ingredient in this recipe is fresh coriander leaf (cilantro), not because it wasn’t available or because I don’t like it, but rather because it didn’t suffer even slight heating well. Save that for your fresh salsa trials.
A mix with a few other chiles that *are* commonly available year round and gentle cooking seem to be the keys to tempering the beast of heat native to the habaneros. The batch I liked most was made with four of the hot little buggers but your tastes might (wisely) vary to the milder end of the spectrum. The acidity and heat will allow the bright flavour to linger a fairly long time if kept refrigerated, perhaps upward of a month or two. I haven’t attempted to ‘can’ properly with heat for longer term storage as I suspect it would lose quite a lot of the interesting character in the process. It’s so quick and easy to make I prefer to use it inside a week and simply make more frequent batches as needed throughout the winter months to appease my inner salsa conquistador.
1 – 796ml (28 oz.) can, diced tomatoes (I prefer ‘no salt added’ versions)
3 dried guajillo or California red dried chiles, stems and seeds removed
2 medium sweet onions, peeled and quartered
3 fresh jalapeno chiles (green), stems, veins, and seeds removed
1 – 6 fresh habanero chiles (how insane you are?) stems, veins, and seeds removed
4 cloves garlic, peeled
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons fine sea salt + up to 2 teaspoons more to taste (*see tasting notes)
3 tablespoons white sugar + up to 2 tablespoons more to taste (*see tasting notes)
Juice of one lime
*Standard chile handling precautions apply. Don’t touch your eyes or lips after handling and if you’re particularly sensitive to the ‘burn’ of chiles, wear latex gloves. ESPECIALLY with the habaneros!!! You have been warned.
Yield: approximately one and a half litres
Empty the can of tomatoes into a fine strainer set over a bowl and allow the liquid to drain for ten minutes giving it a shake every few minutes. Use the juice elsewhere, e.g. soup, rice, or beans.
Into an upright blender, add the dried chiles with just enough boiling water to cover. Allow to sit for ten minutes before blending completely into a smooth paste.
Meanwhile, set up a food processor with standard blade and pulse onions and jalepenos to a medium-fine dice. Add to the blender with the now rehydrated and smoothly blended chiles. Process habaneros and garlic to a very fine mince and also add to the blender. Add drained tomatoes, vinegar, and initial measures of salt and sugar to the blender and pulse *very* briefly until desired consistency is reached, perhaps 4-8 pulses, being careful not to over process. Leave a bit of interesting texture but make sure the tomatoes are broken down appropriately.
Pour entire contents of blender into a saucepan. Taste and adjust salt and/or sugar stirring well between each taste as necessary. Set over *low* heat to warm – do NOT raise the heat above low! Allow the pan to come to temp slowly, stirring occasionally, and simmer just until the salsa heats through and begins to steam, perhaps 10-15 minutes depending on your stove top. Cover, remove from heat, and allow to cool completely. In Canada I suggest a convenient snow bank but your counter top will do nicely as well.
Once cool, stir in the lime juice and chill in the fridge for at least a few hours if not overnight to allow the flavours to come together. I usually fill a one-litre canning jar sealed with a plastic lid to keep in the fridge and the rest stays in the bowl to be eaten within the first few hours.
Serve with warmed tortilla chips or use sparingly on your tamales, tacos, and tortas. Spoon over your chimichangas. Drizzle into your burritos. You get the idea. Depending on how many habaneros you added, it could be deadly but will have excellent flavour all around. Dream of summer tomato and pepper fields yet to come and try not to look out the window at the snow you have to shovel.
*Tasting notes: Because the global supply has wild variations when it comes to chiles, not to mention minor differences in local onions, tinned tomatoes, and garlic, you’re going to have to do some tasting and adjusting to get to the pinnacle of salsa. The goal is balance between the sweet, salt, and sour but you have to know that the salsa will change quite a bit with both the slow cooking and thorough chilling. Ideally you get the perfect measure in before the simmer but most times it’s not quite right. Tasting the salsa warm is also fraught with mistakes because the flavour will change *significantly* once completely cool. Have some warm tortilla chips at the ready and do your best in small increments with the salt, sugar, and vinegar as you progress after the initial cooling. There’s no harm in stirring in a bit more of what you find lacking so long as you let the salsa sit for a good half hour before adding any more during this tweaking stage.
If you find bitter elements, they might have come from an overly generous measure or merely seasonal variations in your garlic and onions. Try warming the salsa again to temper those elements before dumping in another ten cups of sugar. If you find the the heat too high, know that it will calm down somewhat after chilled. The message here is that you have to be as flexible as your source ingredients.
And as an aside, I experimented with using brown sugar instead of white for a few batches and found that using all brown sugar left a ‘muddy’ taste to the finished flavour. A 50/50 mix yielded better results and I might even say that reducing the brown sugar component to 25% might be a better approach. Experiment at will out there and make it your own.
v.6.3
