Homemade Salsa: SALSA!

Sure it’s easy to get a jar of salsa and a bag of chips and demolish the whole thing. We’ve all done that at some point. But what happens when you run out and it’s 2am and all you have are three tomatoes and an onion. Make your own! Lemmie tell ya, you make this and you’re eating the whole thing. And it’s healthy! Just be careful how many corn chips you eat with it.



What you’ll need:

• A bowl
• A sharp knife
• A cutting board
• A juicer or reamer or a thumb with no cuts on it

Ingredients

• 1 garlic clove
• 1 small onion
• 3-4 medium sized tomatoes (I use heirloom)
• 1 small avocado (optional)
• 1 lime
• salt
• cilantro

Step 1: Chop til you drop

Roughly chop the tomatoes, garlic and onion and toss it all into a sizeable bowl.

You NEED a sharp knife for this. I don’t want you torturing a tomato for half an hour because you’re using a dull blade. Get a knife sharpener from Bed Bath & Beyond, they cost 10 bucks, or turn the electric can opener around. It usually has one in the back. Don’t be a cheap ass.


Step 2: Juicy couture

Shut up. Cut the lime in half and juice it. If you don’t have a juicer or a reamer this is what you do. Make a fist. Extend your thumb and the first finger knuckle a bit til they’re aligned. Put half the lime on your thumb, push and twist. Isn’t evolution grand? And for you creationists, if god was so clever he would have made it a lot harder for idiots to procreate. Foiled again.


Step 3: Avocado…isn’t that an Italian lawyer?

L'avvocato is the Italian word for lawyer. When I was learning Italian I noticed that avocado and l’avvocato looked a lot alike. And since one good fruit deserves another... Take your sharp knife and sink the blade into the fruit until it hits the pit. Rotate the fruit around the pit, remove the knife and twist both halves of the fruit in opposite directions. Take the knife and hit the pit with the blade, twist and remove the pit. Don’t worry I’ll post a video of all of this. If the avocado is not quite ripe, the pit isn’t going to come out easily, so just be aware of that. It’ll still taste ok, unless it’s really not ripe. To find a ripe one, pick it up and if there is a bit of give when you squeeze it, you’re good. You don’t want a rock and you don’t want mush. For you heavy-handed types, now would be a good time to learn self control.

You can do this one of two ways: scoop out the inside of the avocado with a spoon and chop it up, or score the inside with a small knife making cubes and scoop out.


Step 4: Mix it baby!

Now that you have all of these great fruits and vegetables and juices in a bowl, mix it up adding in some fresh (or frozen) chopped cilantro and just enough salt to bring out the flavors. Remember to go easy on the salt if you’re eating this with corn ships, since the chips are already quite salty.

And don’t bother storing leftovers. There won’t be any.