The Mexican Salsa Kitchen Garden

Salsa is the Mexican word for sauces (usually hot). Salsa can be added to almost any food and are always a creation waiting to happen. Today’s cooks like to experiment with salsas by spicing them up by adding fruit or avocado. Some cooks like to create their own blend by adding anything from the garden from green beans to bell peppers. Me, I like my salsa fresh, with the basic ingredients of chili peppers, red onion, garlic, tomatillos, Roma tomatoes, cilantro, and lime, salt to taste. To make salsa just mix all the diced ingredients together and keep refrigerated.

I suggest you experiment with your salsa garden. Start by collecting salsa recipes and then planting a basic salsa garden that consists of one tomatillo plant, three or four tomato plants, two or three hot pepper plants, garlic and onions. If you live in a cooler climate you can grow cilantro, but it goes to seed in hotter climates during summer time. Mix the colors of vegetables up too. Why not use a yellow Roma tomato, blended with red or even a green Roma. Tomatillos come in purple and green. Chili peppers range from green to red to yellow to orange, depending on how long they’re left on the plant.

Let’s start with the one basic ingredient that is at the heart of salsa because it doesn’t have heat, it has volume. Tomatoes.

Tomato

Roma 76 days. Determinate. A quality paste tomato. Not of Mexican origin, but well worth planting in the Salsa garden. It has very thick meaty flesh. Source: BAK BOT BURP NES SOU TERR TOT

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Chili Pepper

NEBRASKA DAVE

4/28/2013 4:21:20 PM

Karen, Salsa is indeed the new condiment of choice for almost everyone. It's used in every possible way from chip dips to soup seasoning. It appears that just like chili reciepes, everyone has their own special way to mix up a batch of Salsa. It's so easy to make that even an amateur like me can do it. Thanks for the ideas to get started. Have a great salsa day.