Roasted Salsa

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This week is New Year’s and that means Tamales. We plan to make Cream Cheese Chili Tamales and Turkey Tamales. Here is the recipe for those. 

To go with the Tamales I usually serve salsa and cheese sauce. 

I decided to make a fresh salsa this time rather than buying something from the store. I usually use a combination of these ingredients (how many I used this time):

Tomatoes (4)

Tomatillos (8 small)

Poblano Peppers (2)

Jalapeno Peppers (6)

Garlic (20 cloves)

Onion (2 med)

Cilantro (1 bunch)

Lime (4)

Salt (2 tsp)

In the past we have put these veggies in the smoker and it makes a great smoked salsa. I have also made the salsa with all these things, uncooked. The raw salsa is a little “liquidy”. 


This time I decided to roast everything in the oven, except the cilantro and lime. I roasted them slowly (325°) for about an hour. Everything was nice and dry.  I took off any dried skins, but if they didn’t come off easily, I left them on. 

All the veggies went into the food processor and processed into “dippable” chunks. You don’t want it smooth, but also not huge chunks. 

I then processed the cilantro and lime and 3 or 4 additional garlic cloves, separately. I processed these until pretty small and added them into the salsa. This added a bright, fresh note to the cooked veg flavor. After tasting I added  a little more salt. 

This is a medium hot salsa. I used 2 poblanos and 6 jalapenos. I carefully removed all seeds and scraped the inside of the peppers to remove all membranes. If you want the salsa hotter, just rinse out the seeds and leave the membranes. If you want it mild, delete the jalapenos and just use the poblanos, seeded and scraped. 



The salsa was still a little warm from the oven when I put it in a jar and into the fridge overnight. When the flavors had had time to marry and everything was nice and chilled I took a look and here is the result. The consistency is very thick and stands up very well to a chip. The flavor is bright and complex and I’m looking forward to having it on a tamale! 


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