Hot Salted Lime Salsa - Taste buds Rejoice!

Salsa when you pour it out of the pretty grocery store jar.

Salsa can be a dull affair in Canada.

I am not a fan of most of the ones in my grocery store. You have your choice of hot, medium or mild 90% of the time. Most of them are watery & vaguely tomatoey. No real flavour. Recently a large grocery chain started coming out with different salsas...smoked Chipolte, peach and mango, etc. It was nice for a change, but still. Something was missing. 

Odd fact - did you know Salsa is the 3rd most popular condiment in the world? Check out this link to see for yourself huffingtonpost.com condiments 

Very proud that I grew half of these tomatoes myself.

So recently the Hubby and I scored a great deal on a lot of produce & decided to take the plunge. I wanted to make it a joint effort & use his past kitchen expertise to create something truly special. Boy did we. After a month of letting it sit for flavour, we were pretty impressed with this Salsa.

INGREDIENTS

9 dried chili peppers (I used Ring of Fire Chili's I grew on the balcony last summer)
6 jalapeno peppers chopped (keep the seeds)
6  cups of diced cored tomatoes
2 cups chopped sweet onions
1/2 cup very finely chopped cilantro

10 cloves of garlic (varied sizes)
3/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tbsp kosher salt

3.4 tsp chili flakes

hot water
lime juice
white sugar

white vinegar

HOW TO PREPARE

1. In a little bowl combine the dried chili's with enough hot water to cover them. Soak until they soften up - roughly 15 minutes. Drain off half of the water & then put in a food processor & puree until smooth. **WARNING** don't breath in directly over the bowl. I did this while transferring the puree to a small bowl & had a massive coughing fit.

2. Time to sweat your onions & garlic. How? Get a frying pan out & add 2 tablespoons of lime juice. Add your onions. Over medium high heat gently turn your onions constantly until they have a clearish colour & limp consistency. It brings out the flavour & the sweetness of the onions. It also adds colour & tempers the natural bitterness of the onions as well. Add the garlic in towards the end. There is really only two ways to activate spices. Acid and Heat. We couldn't fry the onions with oil because I am using a water bath canner & I didn't want to comprise the safety of the canned product. So we used the citrus of the lime, and sweated the onions as an alternative.

Hubby lightly salts the salsa through each stage of preparation a pinch at a time.

3. In a large Stainless Steel Pot combine the chili puree, tomatoes, onions & garlic mix, cilantro, jalapeno peppers, red wine vinegar, 1 tbsp of Kosher salt, & hot pepper flakes. Bring to a boil over medium high heat & stir it constantly until slightly thickened (about 15 to 20 minutes)

4. We noticed at this point something was still missing. So to bring the flavours in line my hubby took 2 tbsp of white vinegar & two tbsp of white sugar and boiled it to make a syrup. We added it to the salsa to taste. It really helped bring out the zing of the lime & the tartness of the tomatoes.

Thickening it down. Salsa is halfway to being done.


5. Ladle the hot salsa into jars and waterbath process for 10 minutes. I used 250 ml jars & it made 6 full jars for me. I let my jars sit for one month before opening so the flavours really had a chance to meld together. They will store for 9 months. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. We ate two full jars the first time we opened them.