This is the best Fresh Salsa I have ever made or tasted aside from Chi Chi’s (the restaraunt not the unrelated Hormel grocery store product) of which, this is supposed to be their original recipe before they went to a premade seasoning packet.
Enjoy!
Fresh Garden Salsa.
15 Roma tomatoes – Dice 10 of them
1 bunch of cilantro including stems-chopped fine
1 large onion diced
2 fresh serrano peppers
3 cloves of garlic peeled
1 bunch green onions chopped (green and white parts)
2 limes or about 1/4 cup of lime juice (microwave the limes for about 30 seconds to get more juice and then roll them on a cutting board before cutting and squeezing them)
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp garlic powder or granulated garlic
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp. sugar
Put the remaining five tomatoes in a blender with the serrano peppers, garlic, lime juice and all of the spices. Blend them until it is a pinkish orangish looking thick liquid…it looks pretty gross. Mix it back into the rest of the ingredients.
Notes from the original author:
The fresh salsa that came around years later was very much fresh ingredients. People who think canned tomatoes were in this product are very wrong. The reason it had a saucy texture to it was because 1/3 of the ingredients were put in a blender with the seasoning and the lime juice. The main flavoring was the cilantro.
My notes:
Make sure you make this a day in advance, it needs to sit in the fridge overnight for sure before eating.
The Serrano peppers are a lot smaller that I would have guessed but seem to work just fine.
I’m a novice and was stunned to find out that I didn’t need to pre-chop/dice the ingredients that go into the blender, they turn to liquid immediately.
I used a white onion for the large onion, don’t know if that matters but it worked well.
Some stores have huge bundles of cilantro, others don’t. You can probably use more without harm but keep in mind the bundle sizes vary.
I changed Cumin from 1 tbsp to tsp. The other site said that if you use 1 Tbsp you will ruin the batch and I agree.
When I used to get this fresh salsa at Chi Chi’s they would spice it up for you by adding El Yucateco’s Red Habenaro hot sauce, you don’t need much!!! (www.elyucateco.com) 