Salsa fresca, made with raw ingredients. Other salsas are cooked. Photo courtesy Melissa’s.

The chile was domesticated around 5200 B.C.E., and tomatoes by 3000 B.C.E. both in Central America. The Aztecs combined the two, often along with other ingredients like beans and squash seeds, into a condiment, which the Conquistadors named “salsa,” or sauce. Here’s the history of salsa.

May is National Salsa Month. If you’ve never made salsa at home, now’s the time.

Basic salsa couldn’t be easier: salsa fresca, “fresh salsa” made with raw ingredients, is a combination of chopped tomatoes, onions, chiles and lime juice.

 
If you want to make a cooked salsa, another world of ingredients opens, including roasted vegetables and sweet potatoes to.
 
USING MORE THAN ONE CHILE

There are many easy recipes for salsa fresca; most use jalapeño chiles. But you can layor the chile flavors by adding other varieties.

We adapted this recipe from one for Five Chile Salsa from Melissas.com. It adds an Anaheim chile to the jalapeño.

The Anaheim chile was developed around 1900 in Anaheim, California from New Mexican pasilla chiles. (See the different types of chiles.)

The Anaheim is not a hot chile. It has a modest heat level, as low as 1,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU). Jalapeños are about 10,000 SHU, while habaneros are 100,000 SHU or more.

Bell peppers are also chiles (all chiles come from the genus Capsicum), but they have no heat. Chiles, new world fruits, were mis-named “peppers” by Columbus’s sailors, who compared their heat to black pepper (no relation).

While much of the world continues to use the misnomer “pepper,” we use it only for bell peppers, calling all other varieties by their proper name, chile.

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. SEED and dice the tomatoes and peppers, chop the cilantro and red onion.

2. MIX the tomatoes and peppers in a bowl with the cilantro and red onion.

Top a baked potato with salsa, with or without sour cream (or plain Greek yogurt). Photo courtesy TexaSweet.

4. MIX the ingredients until well combined, serve with tortilla chips, or as a garnish.

 
*Named after the city of Rome, Roma tomatoes are also known as Italian tomatoes or Italian plum tomatoes.
 
WAYS TO ENJOY SALSA

Breakfast

 
Lunch

 
Dinner

 
Snacks

 
What’s your favorite use? Let us know!