I won't apologize for absolutely loving this type of chunky yet watery salsa that a couple of Tex Mex restaurants around me serve. For the life of me I can't figure out how to make this and I can't find a recipe. It's definitely not all fresh ingredients but it's also not fully blended from a can. My best guess so far has been to make the typical blended canned tomatoes Tex mex salsa then also add in fresh chopped tomatoes and white onions, but then let it sit in the fridge to marinate for a while?
Does anyone know how to make this specific kind of salsa?
by stopphones
10 Comments
If you’ve heard of El Torito there’s a copycat recipe on the net for their salsa that uses mostly canned diced tomatoes but adds in like 2 fresh tomatoes for texture.
The wateryness could be liquid from the can or also some places will literally water down their salsa with bullion for additional savory flavor.
Both the El Torito copycat and also this recipe https://www.reddit.com/r/SalsaSnobs/s/vZQGL8rtg8 use canned/pickled jalapenos to achieve that unique restaurant style flavor. The reddit recipe goes so far as to add the brine liquid from the canned jalapenos. I was skeptical at first but after tasting it realized they were absolutely correct.
* 28 ounces **canned chopped tomatoes, in juice** *(alternately, for better flavor, use canned whole tomatoes and chop them yourself; use the juice, too)*
* 3 cloves **garlic**
* peeled Juice of 1 **lime**
* 1 handful **cilantro leaves** (no stems)
* whole ½ cup **pickled jalapeños**, or more (jalapeño peppers are between 2,500 to 8,000 Scoville Heat Units)
* 1 tablespoon **kosher salt**
* ½ **medium onion** (sweet or white)
* 3 fresh s*errano peppers, optional* (serrano peppers are between 10,000 and 23,000 Scoville Heat Units)
How-to video here (via YouTube): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0z4w_-ZH3Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0z4w_-ZH3Q) (2 minutes)
^(Disclaimer: I am not the creator of this recipe, nor affiliated with the video. However I have made this salsa. The finished salsa looks a lot like OP’s request.)
I make mine in a similar fashion but with fresh unseeded jalapeños, and only use canned whole imported Italian San Marzano tomatoes pouring off much of the juice. There’s a huge difference in canned tomato quality/taste*. I like to hand shred the tomatoes but some pulses of a blender works well too and does a good job on the peppers.
*I doubt restaurants use expensive canned tomatoes though
Add Spicy V8 to your favorite salsa recipe. It’s good!
Whenever you have a salsa you want to make more watery, add jarred jalapeno juice. Just a tip 🙂
Fucking hate these posts at this point. Just support the restaurant or figure it out cousin. We ain’t your picture taste maestros. YouTube is a beautiful tool.
Canned, diced tomatoes and use some of the liquid
All of these answers are wrong. This kind of resteraurant style salsa is quite simple. They use El Pato as the base. It’s a canned sauce you can find in most grocery stores.
Then you had chopped tomatoes, onions, cilantro. Salt and lime if needed.
Rick Bayless has some amazing salsa recipes that are authentic:
[https://youtu.be/bC85E00qgVs?si=F6_TyWrNpQepTqHm](https://youtu.be/bC85E00qgVs?si=F6_TyWrNpQepTqHm)
I have a few restaurant recipe manuals from now defunct restaurants but a lot of them use canned plus fresh as mentioned, usually tomato juice or some tomato puree but then adding hand chopped tomatoes onions etc, not just blending everything together