Chomp!
September 13, 2013
Ron Aiken
September 13, 2013
Making Salsa is Harder than You Think
Like many of Chomp!’s ideas, it was a winner – make your own salsa, dude! Hell yeah!
The execution, on the other hand…well, see for yourself.
I should establish first that Chomp! loves chips and salsa. A LOT. Probably WAY TOO MUCH. It’s seriously like my dinner three times a week. For chips, I usually get Santitas (they’re always $2!!!), but the last couple of times I’ve been getting these rocking babies:
Above: Do not be fooled and get the regular blue corn tortilla chips from Garden of Eatin’. They are plain and worthless and yucky. These wonderful Red Hot Blues, however, are so good they really don’t even need salsa. Kind of like Tostitos’ lime-flavored chips, which should be labeled as a Schedule 1 narcotic.
And while I eat chips and salsa a lot, I also am rarely satisfied, if ever, with store-bought salsa. I detest the American insistence on sugary, gloopy, too-thick salsas that you could stucco a wall with and all taste the same, all make you feel fat after eating them. And really, salsa should be a healthy choice, after all, not an endeavor that leaves you with more guilt than eating a bag of Oreos in one sitting (and don’t pretend to tell me you haven’t done that before, experienced that moment when just one more becomes what the hell.).
So I’ve had the idea for a column to make my own for a while now, and figured this was as good a time as any to make it.
In hindsight, I probably should have prepped more.
I’m not saying the salsa I made was garbage, but it didn’t taste any better than store-bought (and maybe – gulp – a bit worse). I think I had the makings of something good, but I may have missed the mark, and it’s probably in the fresh-ingredient category.
Here’s what I bought: Ro-Tel Diced Tomatoes & Green Chiles (these were super, BTW); La Preferida Green Chiles (not bad); Ortega Diced Jalapenos (I’d have been so much better off with fresh), Goya black beans (OK) and Goya Salsa de Tomato.
On that last score, I thought Salsa de Tomato meant, you know, salsa. Of course as YOU already know, because you can be smarter than Chomp! sometimes, it was just plain old tomato paste. So that was a loser right there. But I did add a bit of it and it did thicken it, which wasn’t horrible.
Nor was it good. In fact, I’m guessing you can already imagine in your mind’s eye what my salsa looked like. Not good.
Here’s the picture. You may want to have children leave the room, and you probably shouldn’t look if you’re pregnant or thinking about becoming pregnant.
Above: This is the absolute best I could make this look. Please avert your eyes quickly before you begin to want to kill yourself. Do NOT stare at it, because Chomp! cannot be held accountable for your actions if you do.
Yeah, rough stuff. I had this image in my mind’s eye of fresh cilantro, some avocado with lemon and lime juice, cutting my own beautiful tomatoes and some onions and making basically the freshest, best salsa ever.
Instead, I made another pile of red goop the world didn’t need. Oh well, Chomp! can admit failure. What I would like, however, is for some kind, gently, loving soul out there to send me your salsa recipe that I can make and delight in. If you do this, you magnificent person, I will make it, photograph it and write about it, giving you and yours full credit.
Seriously, I can’t go back to store-bought, but I can’t stay away from chips and salsa. Help Chomp!, please, before it’s too late and I go looking for the nearest bag of Oreos and a rifle with a trigger I can reach easily with my toe. Do they sell those at Publix? They should, right next to the Oreos.
My life is your hands, people, so please, make with that salsa recipe, OK? OK. Til next time!
Follow Chomp! on Twitter @RonAiken and on Facebook. Email Chomp! at [email protected]. He even answers his phone sometimes: 803-200-8809. Cheers!
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