Best Homemade Salsa Recipe: A Piquant Green Salsa with Costa Rican Flavor
The Best Fresh Salsa Recipe
This recipe is for a quick and easy-to-make green sauce that is great to as a party dip and as a complement for beans, meats and many Central or Latin American dishes. It uses fresh tomatillos and it is bursting with fresh salsa flavor. Everyone I know who has tried it loves it. And you can adapt it to your taste, making it mild by omitting the hot chiles and substitute mild chiles, or you can make it more picante by adding more jalapenos. All you need to make this salsa is a blender, a mesh colander and the few ingredients below.
I really think this is the best homemade salsa recipe if you want to have a green, fresh-tasting complement to your food. This particular recipe has a Costa Rican slant to it, as it uses Salsa Lizano as an ingredient. This salsa is also made in Costa Rica under the generic name "Salsa Inglesa" by several different companies.
Cook Time
Ingredients for Best Homemade Salsa Recipe
- 2 1/2 cups tomatillos, Mexican green tomatoes, sliced in two
- 1/2 cup onions, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, whole
- 2 teaspoons garlic, powdered
- 2 teaspoons onion, powedered
- 1/2 cup Cilantro, chopped fine
- 1/2 teaspoon, salt
- 3 tbs Salsa Lizano, (or Salsa Inglesa)
- 3 tbs lime juice
Instructions
- Remove the tomatillo husks, remove the stems and wash the fruit. Slice the tomatillos in half and put in a blender. Remove the stems from the jalapeños if they are present (you can used chopped peppers as well). You can use the markings on the blender jar to determine how many tomatillos to add.
- Add all of the other ingredients to the blender, minus the Salsa Lizano and the lime juice, and then blend them until there is a homogenous mixture.
- Place a collander with a fine mesh in the sink and pour the blended ingredient into it to drain excess water from the salsa. This will take only a minute.
- Place the salsa in a bowl and add the Salsa Lizano and the lime juice. Mix thoroughly and place in the refrigerator to store for 1 hour before serving.
| Nutrition Facts | |
|---|---|
| Serving size: 1/3 cup | |
| Calories | 19 |
| Calories from Fat | 0 |
| % Daily Value * | |
| Fat 0 g | |
| Saturated fat 0 g | |
| Unsaturated fat 0 g | |
| Carbohydrates 0 g | |
| Sugar 2 g | |
| Fiber 1 g | 4% |
| Protein 1 g | 2% |
| Cholesterol 0 mg | |
| Sodium 20 mg | 1% |
| * The Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet, so your values may change depending on your calorie needs. The values here may not be 100% accurate because the recipes have not been professionally evaluated nor have they been evaluated by the U.S. FDA. | |
Serving Suggestions for this Green Salsa Recipe
You can serve this as a separate sauce to accompany meals that have beans to help complement the bland flavor of the beans.
For parties, this green salsa is great to use with tortilla chips. It is nice also to have a red sauce and a bean dip to complement it for contrasting flavors and textures.
If you are grilling chicken or beef fajitas, this sauce is very good with the meat as a salsa added with the meat when eaten in a flour or corn tortilla.
Storage of This Green Sauce
This homemade salsa stores in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. But, it is unlikely that it will last that long in the fridge, it is more likely that it will be finished within a day or two of making it. However, if you want, you could consider also canning the salsa. It is acidic, so follow standard canning procedures that you would use with tomatoes. They only thing about canning though is that some of the flavor gets cooked out, particularly the cilantro. So, if you do this, consider putting in fresh cilantro leaves when you break open a jar. That will perk it up and give it a fresher taste.
