Yes, going to the supermarket and buying some ready-made salsa is easy. But that's about the only one reason you would wanna do that. I believe in making things at home. From scratch. So here are 3 reasons why you should make your own homemade salsa.
And if you're just here for the recipe - scroll on down for my easy salsa recipe. It is super simple to make. You don't even need a blender - just a big bowl, a cutting board and 5 minutes.
What is Wrong With Store-Bought Salsa?
#1: It's more expensive
This one is true for almost anything that you make at home from scratch compared to the store-bought version. Making things at home is just cheaper. Especially if you are making big amounts of something and you can buy ingredients in bulk, you can save big time.
My easy salsa recipe cost me 1.40€ and made roughly 400ml of salsa. I compared that to two brands in my local supermarket which were significantly more expensive and only contained 200ml of salsa. So, my homemade salsa was 3 times cheaper than store-bought.
#2: It's a sugar bomb
The second ingredient in store-bought salsa is sugar. Can you believe it? There are 27g of sugar per 100ml in the store-bought salsa compared to only 3g sugar in the homemade version. And these 3g of sugar are entirely natural from the tomatoes and not artificially added.
#3: Long ingredient lists
When you look at the ingredient list of store-bought salsa, you find things like modified starch, thickening agent xanthan gum, tapioca starch, plant-based oil, thickening additive E412 and many more. Now, some of these ingredients are not necessarily harmful to our body. Others do affect our digestive system, can cause allergies or influence our nutrient absorption. Generally speaking, a short ingredient list is always better. For my easy salsa recipe, you only need 5 ingredients: tomatoes, onion, lime juice, jalapenos and spices.
The Only Easy Salsa Recipe You Need
This recipe uses a combination of canned tomatoes and fresh tomatoes. I find that if you only use canned tomatoes, the salsa turns out quite runny. And if you only use fresh tomatoes, it is not juicy enough. Feel free to adjust the canned to fresh tomato ratio to your liking.
A lot of salsa recipes call for a blender of food processor to blend everything together. I often don't have time to pull out my food processor just to make a simple salsa. I'd rather mix all the ingredients in a big bowl and that's it - it only takes me 5 minutes. And the best part: there's hardly any dish washing needed afterwards.
Better Than Store-Bought Salsa Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 can diced tomatoes
- 5 medium sized tomatoes
- ½ small onion
- juice of ½ lime
- 10 pickled jalapeno slices
- salt
- pepper
- 1 tsp ground cumin
Instructions
- Pour can of diced tomatoes into a big bowl. Smash the tomato chunks with a fork until desired consistency reached.
- Finely chop fresh tomatoes, onion and jalapeno slices and add to the bowl.
- Add juice of ½ lime and ground cumin and stir well.
- Add salt and pepper to taste.
- Place salsa in fridge for a few hours or even overnight for more aromatic flavours!
Notes
You can adjust the canned to fresh tomato ratio to adjust the consistency to your liking.
Want less spice? Simply reduce the number of jalapeno slices? Want more spice? You can add a few teaspoons of pickled jalapeno brine for some extra spice.
