How to Make Salsa, the Party Food for Lazy People
Here’s how you win every summer party without breaking a sweat: make salsa. Your friends might spend hours fussing over devilled eggs or miso-glazed ribs or a twelve-ingredient rum punch, but you are smarter than that. In terms of party contributions, you are looking for a small investment with a big return. And let me be the first to tell you, salsa is that dish.
There are a lot of different ways to make salsa, of course. There are cooked salsas and raw salsas, salsas made with dried chiles and fresh ones, salsas traditions from all over Latin America. This is the lazy man’s guide to improvising an easy salsa, but once you’ve mastered the technique, it’s worth exploring the infinite varieties of the form.
Pick a Base Fruit
Sigh, yes, sorry: the classic red sauce you buy in the jar at the store is a fruit sauce. Not what you wanted to hear, I know, but scientifically-speaking, it’s the truth. The most common bases are tomatoes (for red salsa) or tomatillos (for green salsa or salsa verde), but you can use a wide variety of fruits if you want to get “creative”. Citrus, like grapefruit or orange, is nice (although not in season right now)_so are peaches or strawberries. Pick your poison.
Gauge Your Spice Factor
Don’t go nuclear—know your audience, especially if there are going to be a bunch of kids—but you want your salsa to have a kick. While pretty basic, the good old jalapeño adds plenty of spice with a bit of a grassy, vegetal flavor, while serranos and habaneros really set things on fire. A mix of a few types of chiles can be nice, too.
Whichever chile you decide to use, remember that the interior seeds and veins really jack up the spice level, so remove them before adding your chile to the salsa. Unless, of course, you are looking to scorch your pals’ tastebuds off, in which case by all means use the whole chile.
Add Some Other Flavors
Your primary ingredients are going to be tomatoes (or tomatillos) and chiles, but you need a few more flavorings to complete the salsa. Aromatics: this is a fancy word for onions and garlic. Use them. And cilantro, if you’re into it. You also need an acid (lime, probably, but lemon or grapefruit work too), and salt. Lots of it.
Now Make Your Salsa
Ingredients assembled, it is time to decide how lazy you truly are. Are you going to chop everything by hand? Or are you going to dump it all in a food processor? That’s what I figured. I regret to inform you that even if you go the food processor route, you still need to trim and rough chop your vegetables, but it’s still much easier (and less messy). Take the core out of the tomatoes and give them a rough chop; you want 2-3 cups of tomato. An onion, or maybe half an onion, peeled and rough chopped. A few peeled cloves of garlic, and a bunch of (washed!!) cilantro. Buzz it a few times til everything is chopped but not obliterated.
Now, you’re going to start flavoring the salsa. Start with you chiles, and start small. You can always add more, but you can’t take them out once you’ve created an inedible fire sauce. Once the spice level is to your liking, add salt and lime juice until it tastes good. Note: you will probably need more salt and more lime juice than you think.
A Note on Chips
Do not be the asshole who brings salsa to the party and forgets to bring chips. Bring more than you think you need. And have fun!
