Making good salsa was something of a unattainable quest for me for several years. At first, I wasn’t really quite sure what kind of salsa I really wanted. Was I trying to make a fresh salsa, or a cooked one? How about style? Traditional or Tex-Mex? What I definitely knew that I didn’t want was the spicy ketchup so commonly labeled salsa, sitting in jars on the store shelf.

While this crusade isn’t like my others, which usually centers around the ingredient list of whatever I’m replacing (turns out most salsas are pretty tame from the processed food standpoint), it was equally as important to me, and turned out to be solvable by sticking to similar principles.

Growing up in the southwest means sampling dozens of restaurant salsas at countless eateries, which are always better than anything you can buy. Trying to replicate these at home was an exercise in frustration. When I was a teen, my father would always be tweaking a salsa recipe, adding this and that, until the method became complicated and the ingredient list long. Every iteration always seemed to be missing something.

The answer was much simpler, albeit not as obvious.

Tomatoes are one of my favorite foods, though they weren’t always. Growing up, I, like Brad, experienced the horrors of the bad tomato: rubbery, bland, overly acidic, sometimes with that white rock-like center. Awful. I really feel bad for a lot of people, because this is the only tomato they know, and they go through life thinking that tomatoes taste bad. But tomatoes are delicious, when properly handled.

Proper handling means that they shouldn’t be picked until they’re ripe, or as close to ripe as possible. This means never using ripening enhancer. Unfortunately, most tomatoes are exposed to some sort of gas (usually ethylene) to accelerate the ripening process. This allows more tomatoes to ship without spoiling, which means more money for the food industrial complex. What it also means is a horrible tasting tomato.

How do you buy tomatoes that don’t go through this process? First, you can try to buy local. Locally grown produce has less of a chance of spoiling en route, so there’s less need for ethylene use. You can also buy organic tomatoes, which are banned from being exposed to ethylene. The ideal combination would be both. Even more ideal would be a tomato you grew yourself.

Now that you know you need a beautifully ripe tomato, the question becomes what kind of tomato? There’s your standard tomato, beefsteak, pear, cherry, and countless heirloom varieties of all shapes and sizes. To me, there’s one that is the most balanced and all-purpose: plum. The plum tomato has a good meaty texture, has some sweetness without being too sweet, and just enough acid to give a nice tartness. I don’t like using standard tomatoes because I find they have too much acid, and some heirloom varieties are much too sweet for salsa.

Once you’ve got your perfect tomato, making great salsa turns out to be an exercise in restraint. Less is more. Onion. Chiles. Cilantro. Lime/Vinegar. That’s all you should really need. Now manipulating the preparation and quantities of these ingredients will lead to different types of salsas. You can roast the tomatoes and chiles for a smoky flavor, for example. But it turns out that my favorite salsa is the most basic of all. Something that in Mexico is called salsa mexicana which is a fresh tomato salsa. When prepared with fresh, ripe ingredients, there’s nothing better.

My quest is complete.

Salsa Mexicana

Makes about 3 cups (maybe)

• 1 pound ripe, organic plum tomatoes (about 2 cups)
• 1/2 cup chopped yellow or white onion (not sweet!)
• 1/2-2 jalapeños (to taste)
• 1/4-1/2 cup cilantro (to taste)
• Juice of 1/4-3/4 of a lime (to taste)
• 1-2 tsp. kosher salt (to taste)

Cut each tomato in half, pole to pole.  Using your fingers, scoop out the seeds and the core of the tomato and discard.  This should be easy if your tomatoes are ripe.  The seeds are generally not good eats, and will only make your salsa taste more acidic, in a bad way.

Cut each tomato half into strips and then dice the strips.  Place diced tomatoes in a non-reactive container.

Add the chopped onion to the tomatoes.

Mince the jalapeño(s).  It’s a good idea to invest in some latex or nylon gloves for this.  I’ve spent whole days with burning-fingertip, salsa hangovers.  Add some of the jalapeño to the tomato-onion mixture, reserving some to adjust heat if necessary.

Chop the cilantro, and add to the proto-salsa.  Put in however much looks right.  You’ll know.

Add the smaller amount of lime at first.  You can always add more later.  What I’ve found is that you want just some background brightness from the lime.  You don’t want it to be too limey (some traditional recipes don’t even call for lime, but I think it adds a nice crispness).

Add some salt, stir well, and taste it.  Now walk away.  The salt needs a little time to work on the tomato.  In a short amount of time (~10-15 minutes) the salt will have pulled a lot of moisture out of the tomato creating a delicious salsa-juice.  Stir again and taste again.  Now you can adjust seasoning and add more salt, jalapeño, or lime to taste.  If you do this too early, it’s easy to over-season.

Grab some chips and kill it.

Variation: For an extra summery spin-off try a tomato-corn salsa (pictured above).  The next time you’re having sweet corn, cook a couple of extra ears, cut it off the cob and sub it in for the onion.  Delicious.

Tags: ethylene, food, salsa, tomatoes

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 12:19 am and is filed under Lots of Pulp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.