Throw everything in the blender for a smooth salsa if you don’t like chunks. The taste is fantastic!
INGREDIENTS:
Tomatoes, 8 fresh diced
White Onion, 1 diced
Cilantro, one bunch fresh diced
Green Onions, 5 thinly sliced
Garlic Cloves, 2 crushed
Peppers, add as many as your pain tolerance can handle, finely chopped or none if you don’t like it hot
Cumin, 1 teaspoon powder
Chili Powder, 1 teaspoon
Sage, 1 teaspoon
Oregano, 1 teaspoon
Zest from one Lime
Juice of One Lime
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Lemon Pepper, a few shakes
DIRECTIONS:
Add everything together and stir. That’s how easy it is! The wonderful thing about Pico is that if you want a smooth Salsa just throw it in the processor and you have it. Super simple and you can control the heat level yourself by adding as much or as little peppers as you like.
Absolutely incredible…totally fresh, and the best salsa you will ever taste! Why? Because you made it yourself, and nothing out of a jar can beat that.
Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that this was so easy to make? I went to Mexican restaurants for years to have this with chips because I had no idea in the world it was so very easy to make…but it is.
For me it’s all about fresh ingredients and uniformly chopped vegetables.
Just a few wonderful vegetables chopped, that go together, to make the best tasting Pico ever.
I grew up eating wonderful Mexican food in California. Much thanks goes to my wonderful aunt Dar pictured above, it is because of her that I love Mexican food so much today. I miss her terribly, because she lives in California and we are now in Georgia. It was my aunt that had me eating hot peppers at a really, really young age, and now there really isn’t much that I can’t and don’t want to eat that is hot, hot hot.
Now I have turned into one of those people who love my head to explode from hot peppers and my mouth to be on fire. As a little girl, she would take me to these little taco stands in Alhambra, where we would sit out side and I would try to eat yellow hot peppers out of the jar they had on each table. I have had a wonderful time learning to make my own Mexican food over the years…and more than ever…I love it hot.
Thirteen ingredients…that is if you want to make it hot by adding peppers.
We usually make two batches…one with hot peppers (jalapeño, Serrano or Habanero. Usually a combination of whatever hot peppers we have on hand) for us, and one with no peppers at all, for those that do not like their mouths on fire, like I do.
Our granddaughter Noel, at age 4, is already in the kitchen helping make Pico. She takes it to pre school for lunch in a little square Tupperware container…how cute is that? This wonderful dish is made up completely with freshly chopped vegetables…so it’s crazy good for her.
I’m not sure if she loves it so much, because we let her help make it, or if she is in training to become a great culinary chef at an extremely early age..
Either way…it gives us much joy. At her young age, she does not have a pallet for spicy food…yet, and of course we would never allow her cut hot peppers. But she really enjoys being able to be trusted to cut tomatoes and being a part of the prep work in the kitchen. She is learning some valuable lessons in the kitchen with us, patients…social skills, listening, following rules and direction and for us, having one on one time with her is precious.
Her ability of being open to taste new foods, learning knife skills…all be it that her knife is extremely dull…creativity, and best of all…the love of cooking.
This is the red bowl that we always put our hot Pico in. It’s nice and shallow, perfect to use with chips AND the red color is a big red flag that tells everyone…this stuff is hot…and unless you want your mouth to burn…don’t come near this bowl.
Next to the red bowl, ewe have the excellent tasting but totally mild Pico in the white bowl. This is for the any person who is not inclined to have their taste buds disintegrate after just one bite of the hot stuff.
8 tomatoes, diced. If you can grow them in your back yard…of course that is the best. When we purchase tomatoes from the market, we prefer using of Roma tomatoes when they are in season, mixed with vine ripe or Heirloom tomatoes at a ratio of 3 to 1. The Roma tomatoes are generally firmer and have fewer seeds and the Vine Ripe or Heirloom tomatoes offer a good red color and a softer texture. Regardless of the type of tomato you prefer or have available, the rule always stands…the fresher the better.
I like my Pico on the juicy side so I just dice my tomatoes and put the entire tomato including the seeds, right in the bowl. My husband on the other hand, prefers Pico with less juice, so he removes everything but the meat of the tomato.
If the dryer type suits you, here’s how my husband does it. For the Roma tomatoes, slice them from stem to tip and clean out the center of each half with a paring knife. For the Vine Ripe or Heirloom tomatoes or any round tomato, cut the tomato in half at the equator which exposes each seed sack. Again, using a paring knife, cut out each seed compartment.
My husband takes these few extra steps to eliminate as much juice as possible. After dicing, he puts the tomato pieces in a mesh sieve and salts them liberally, which extracts more juice out of the tomatoes. He leaves them in the sieve while he dices the onions then transfers them to their respective colored bowl.
5 Green Onions diced. You can tell these just came out of my garden because they are so dirty. Good? What an understatement!
Because my mouth seems to have a coating of steel, I like Pico really, really, hot, so I add, six Serrano Peppers, 6 Jalapeno, two Habanero, and a handful of Crushed Pepper Flakes. The wonderful thing about making your own, is that you can make it as hot as you like, or as mild as you like.
One white, yellow or red onion diced
One bunch of cilantro chopped. I also chop up half of the stem because there is soooo much flavor there…I just chop it really fine.
The juice from one lime. Mix the fresh ingredients together with the spices and you are done…that’s all there is to it.
Not only is this simple, but better, because fresh is ALWAYS the best.
The wonderful thing about cooking is you can really add how much of whatever it is that you like best…especially for a recipe like this one.
It isn’t like baking…the measurements do not have to be exact.
Salt can change a hum drum food into perfection…so you have to taste it…and keep tasting.
If you don’t like cilantro leave it out. If you like it hot add Jalapeño, Serrano and one or two Habanero…or leave the peppers completely out if you want it mild. If I want to make more of a salsa, having it be more blended and less chunky, put everything in the blender and hit pulse, three or four times. That is awesome too and either way you choose to make it, it’s a great topping over fish, fish tacos, pork, beef tacos…seriously…what does not taste better with fresh Pico on it?
And it really is wonderful to see our grand-daughter, devour fresh vegetables. If I have to put them on a chip for her to eat them…so be it. All I know is she is getting fresh wonderful vegetables in her diet and that makes me very happy.
