Salsa Fresca

This fresh salsa recipe tastes completely different than supermarket salsa in a jar. There's a whole lot of chopping involved but it's worth it!

• 1 large ripe tomato
• 2 jalapeño, stemmed
• 1 small yellow onion
• 1 clove garlic, peeled
• fresh cilantro
• salt
• lime juice

Very finely chop the ingredients. Do not use a food processor.  

Combine, season with salt and lime juice and let sit for a half hour before serving.

It should be obvious, but this salsa will be spicy! It has two jalapeños but most importantly it contains the seeds and ribs so it definitely has a kick to it. If you do not like spicy food you will definitely not like this salsa!

Prepare the fresh salsa a half hour before serving to allow the flavors to meld. I think it's worth the intensive chopping effort to get this fresh taste, which really only lasts for a few hours. It looks like a large quantity but it's so tasty and light you'll eat a lot of it.

The recipe is from Authentic Mexican by Rick Bayless pp. 35-36. This is an excellent cookbook. I highly recommend it.

Good with tortilla chips and also on smoked pork tacos .

For one person you could easily halve the recipe with a small tomato, one jalapeño, and part of an onion. It's also good with red onion, which is what I did for my citrus marinated fish taco .

Update 2022-10-10

It's also possible to make a smaller serving. I made this for a burrito.

2025-12-02

This seems like a good amount to make.

2025-12-17

I don't always have fresh cilantro, so I got this. It's good until April 18, 2026, which is handy. We'll see how it works later.

2025-12-19

The Oxo Good Grips produce saver really works! This cilantro from 3 weeks ago still had enough good leaves to make salsa today, barely.

I also tried an experiment. I made two servings of the onion, garlic, jalapeño, cilantro, and lime juice and froze one serving. The tomatoes won't freeze but I think these ingredients will, and then I can quickly chop a tomato to make a batch of salsa fresca if this works.