Easy Restaurant-Style Blender Salsa
I’m a chips and salsa fiend.
I almost don’t even need the chips and can just shovel in the salsa by the fork-full.
But everything tastes better with salty, crunchy corn chips.
And the hotter the salsa is, the better. Hurts so good. The more you have, the more you want.
The best part of this salsa is how fast, easy, and goofproof it is. It doesn’t hurt that it’s low-cal and all veggies.
Add all the ingredients to your blender or food processor, blend, and you’re done in under two minutes. My favorite kind of recipe.
The recipe is customizable and requires you to stop, taste-test, and tweak based on your own personal preferences. Everyone’s preference for salt, heat, and preferred texture differs. After you’ve blended it and gotten it just right, feel free to stir in a handful of black beans or corn.
The salsa is extremely hard to resist right out of the blender, but if you can make it a day in advance and store it in the fridge, it’s so much better the second and third day. I’ve never been able to get it to last past the third day.
Over time the flavors really marry, the rawness of the onion and garlic mellows, and the heat level while still intense has a smoother intensity. Use less jalepenos and/or remove the seeds if you don’t like four-alarm fires as much as I do.
Thankfully my family also appreciates the sinus-clearing powers of big, bold-flavored salsa as much as I do. We love this salsa so much more than any restaurant or storebought salsa. Love it when homemade, easy recipes trump all the others.
Easy Restaurant-Style Blender Salsa
The best part of this salsa is how fast, easy, and goofproof it is. Add all the ingredients to your blender or food processor, blend, and you're done in under two minutes. Stop, taste-test, and tweak based on your own personal preferences. After you've blended it and gotten it just right, feel free to stir in a handful of black beans or corn. The salsa is extremely hard to resist right out of the blender, but if you can make it a day in advance and store it in the fridge, it's so much better the second and third day. Over time the flavors really marry and mellow. We love this salsa so much more than any restaurant or storebought salsa. Love it when homemade, easy recipes trump all the others.
Yield: about 4 cups
Prep Time: 2 minutes
Cook Time: 0 minutes
Total Time: 2 minutes
Ingredients:
one 28-ounce can tomatoes, including juice (I used these whole, peeled plum tomatoes)
1 small yellow onion, peeled and roughly chopped
1 or 2 jalepeno peppers, de-stemmed and roughly chopped (I prefer 2; remove seeds to greatly reduce heat level)
3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin, or to taste
1 1/2 teaspoons salt, or to taste (remember some brands of tomatoes and chips are much saltier than others)
1/4 to 1 teaspoon granulated sugar, optional and to taste (balances the heat and tomato acidity; start with less and add more if necessary; careful not to over-sweeten)
1 or 2 handfuls cilantro leaves, discard stems (I prefer 2)
about 3 tablespoons lime juice
about 3/4 cup corn, optional
about 3/4 cup canned black beans, drained and rinsed, optional
corn chips, for serving
Directions:
- Add all ingredients (except optional corn and beans) to the canister of a blender or food processor in the order listed. Pulse or blend on high power until texture is as smooth as desired. If you have a very strong blender, you probably don't need to pre-chop the ingredients before adding them to the blender, but I do just to make sure I don't get large random, accidentally unblended chunks of any one ingredient.
- Taste the salsa and based on personal preference tweak as necessary.
- Optionally stir in the corn and black beans.
- Transfer to airtight container and serve immediately with chips. However, I prefer to refrigerate salsa for 1 day prior to serving because I prefer chilled salsa and because the flavors marry, mellow, and the flavor improves on the second and third day. Salsa will likely keep up to 1 week airtight in the fridge; however, we've always eaten a batch within 3 days.
Recipe from Averie Cooks. All images and content are copyright protected. Please do not use my images without prior permission. If you want to republish this recipe, please re-write the recipe in your own words, or simply link back to this post for the recipe. Thank you.
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