First, the salsa had to have body. It had to cling to the tortilla chip like its life depended on it. There is nothing more frustrating than a thin, watery salsa that defies your every effort to scoop it up. I believe that a thicker consistency is paramount, but in somewhat of a contradiction, I wanted to avoid making a super-chunky “pico de gallo” style salsa too. I have had many unpleasant experiences with inferior chunky salsas that were nothing more than unripened tomatoes, overwhelmingly raw onions, a palate-numbing amount of cilantro, all drowning in a pool of lime juice. The freshness and quality of the tomatoes was of serious concern to me, and presented a host of problems that I would have to reconcile in my final recipe.
Secondly, the salsa had to have heat. This requirement became especially important when it came time to select the kind(s) of chiles that would go into the final recipe. When I’m making guacamole, I almost always use fresh Jalapeños and serranos. Fresh chiles bring a very raw heat to the palate party, and are a very nice compliment to the mild, creamy flavor of the avocados. This raw heat is fine for guacamoles, but I think that in a salsa this heat can be overwhelming and numb the palate to all other flavors. After taking this into consideration, I decided that I would steer clear of fresh chiles and embrace the wonderful qualities of dried and smoked chiles like guajillos and chipotles instead. Even though these chiles don’t bring quite as much searing heat to the party, they do impart an abundance of unique flavors and allow those flavors to shine through.
Lastly, at the risk of backing myself into a proverbial culinary corner, I would also like to state that I am generally not a fan of fruit salsas being used as appetizers. While I think that a mango salsa is a wonderful addition to a nice piece of rare tuna, it’s just not what I’d pair with tortilla chips and a cold beer. Taking these general conditions and criteria into consideration, I began my search for a great salsa recipe.
I began my search online and in various cookbooks. To my dismay, the majority of the recipes that I located resembled hot sauces and marinades more than the type of salsa that I sought. With the increasing availability and popularity of cuts of meat like skirt and flank steak, many people are very interested in different flavor and spice combinations with which to prepare them. Most of them looked delicious and I will be sure to return to them when I have a nice piece of beef to work with. They were just not what I was looking for given my requirements for this recipe.
My next source of inspiration was friends and family. I am lucky enough to include many excellent cooks among my group of friends, and I am also related to some of the best cooks that I know. My aunt is a food scientist, so I figured that she would be a great place to start. She agreed with my decision to focus on dried and smoked chiles instead of fresh, raw ones. She also suggested that I could get around my issues with the freshness and quality of the tomatoes by utilizing a high-quality brand of the canned Italian variety. Like frozen vegetables, canned tomatoes are packed at their peak of freshness, and in recent years have also become available in organic varieties. I was sold.
My concerns about core ingredients having been somewhat addressed, I decided to turn to the problem of preparation. I knew that the best I could do with a chef’s knife was to finely chop my ingredients, and I realized that it wasn’t going to be fine enough to attain the consistency I was going for. My other option was to utilize an ancient piece of cookware that has been used in Mexico and Central America for centuries – the molcajete. While it’s a wonderful tool for grinding and blending spices and my favorite tool for making guacamole, the molcajete presented a few problems as well. For one – mashing and pulverizing my rehydrated chilies and chopped onions into something smooth and silky. It simply wasn’t going to work. Needing more inspiration, I contacted my friend Danny, himself a lover of all things Mexican. I genuinely expected him to bestow upon me a gem of deeply held wisdom, and to my surprise, he suggested only that I should try making my salsa in an electric blender. I heeded his excellent advice, and was extremely pleased with the result.
After much experimentation, and comfortable in the knowledge that you may have lost interest many paragraphs ago, I present the final version of my salsa recipe.
Salsa Muy Rápido y Muy Sabrosa
* one dozen dried guajillo chiles
* 6 chipotle chiles in adobo, with 2 Tbsp of the adobo sauce
* 28 oz can of peeled tomatoes, drained of liquid, reserving 1/4 cup for later use
* 1/2 cup chopped white onion
* 1/2 cup cilantro leaves
* 2 cloves of garlic
* Salt to taste
Soak the guajillo chilies in bowl filled with boiling water for thirty minutes. When done, remove the seeds and stems, reserving a few seeds to add to blender for additional heat if desired. Toss in a blender with the chipotles, tomatoes, onion, garlic, cilantro, and lime juice. Blend until smooth. Add reserved tomato juice a little bit at a time until salsa reaches desired consistency. Season with salt. Cool in refrigerator. Serve with your favorite tortilla chips (as long as they aren’t Tostitos) or as an garnish for tacos and enchiladas.
This recipe makes something that manages to be a wonderful, traditional salsa while also being completely antithetical to the Super Bowl Sunday variety. Not a raw jalapeno in sight! It’s made in a blender! It uses canned tomatoes! I’m having a hard time even justifying its existence! As a bonus, for those of you who like your salsa slightly milder in heat but not in flavor, I also experimented with using tomatillos to make a salsa verde. This salsa utilizes raw, fresh chilis because in this case the dried and smoked varieties would overwhelm the tomatillos.
Tomatillo Salsa
* 1 1/2 lb tomatillos
* 1/2 cup chopped white onion
* 1/2 cup cilantro leaves
* 1 Tbsp fresh lime juice
* 1/4 teaspoon sugar
* 2 Jalapeños OR 2 serranos, stemmed, seeded and chopped
* Salt to taste
Enjoy with friends.
