Restaurant Style Salsa Recipe

Fat free, full of flavour, and utterly addictive, this is a restaurant style salsa that’s the perfect consistency for scooping up with corn chips. Or go super healthy and serve it with crudités!

Salsa recipe – restaurant style

You’ve seen the jars sold alongside corn chips at the grocery store. You’ve devoured inordinate amounts of it at your favourite Mexican restaurant. And now it’s time to make it at home. It’s healthier, it’s cheaper and it tastes SO GOOD! Flavour, flavour, flavour – homemade salsa has flavour you simply cannot buy in a jar!

What goes in salsa

Here are the ingredients in my salsa recipe. The key things that add great flavour to salsa are cumin, cilantro/coriander, garlic, onion and jalapeño. I also like to add canned green chiles which adds terrific smokiness and small touch of heat (not much). Canned green chiles are a popular Tex-Mex ingredient in America that’s not (yet) available here in Australia. I bring back dozens every time I visit the US, that’s how much I love it! It’s easy to sub the flavour using chargrilled peppers – though they are red, not green, they add the same smokiness that the green chiles add.

Once you’ve gathered your ingredients, it’s as simple as plonk and blitz. Make it as chunky or smooth as you like. I like mine more smooth because I find you get better flavour when the onion etc are blitzed up quite finely. Using crushed canned tomato in this recipe isn’t just about convenience. It’s also because we can’t always get really great quality fresh tomatoes, but we can always find great quality canned tomatoes. If you’re keen to make a recipe using fresh tomatoes, try this one from Jo Cooks. I made it over Christmas and it is terrific! Also, the chunkier the salsa, the more it separates when sitting around. So it holds up better the smoother it is.

How and what to serve with salsa

The obvious way to serve is as a dip for corn chips or anything suitable for dunking, but there’s a whole bunch of other really great ways to use salsa! Here’s a few ideas:

Topping / dipping for tacos, burritos, fajitas, nachos, quesadillas – basically everything and anything Mexican Spoon over crispy pan fried fish, juicy baked chicken breast, plain or marinated pan fried pork chops Dollop on this Mexican Chicken Salad

For the healthiest dip platter ever, serve salsa with crudités (that’s a fancy word for veggie sticks), like this one – a photo from my Hummus recipe.

I make this salsa recipe a lot because I’m a self confessed Snack Monster and this is my way of having something nibbly without the guilt. It’s one of those foods I call “incidentally healthy”. Meaning – it’s not a stripped back “diet” version of the way it’s supposed to be. Snack Monsters unite! Think of all the guilt free snacking possibilities! (Just ignore all the photos of the corn chips all over this post. Think – carrot sticks. 😂) – Nagi x