Salsa Molcajete Recipe
Servings: 2 cups of salsa
Ingredients
- 1 to 5 Chiles de Arboles depending on how spicy you want it
- 2 to 3 Cloves of garlic
- ½ Teaspoon of salt plus more to taste
- 1 Jalapeno pepper
- ½ of a medium onion cut into quarters
- 2 to 3 Tomatillos
- 1 Large Tomato
Instructions
- Toast the Chilies de Arbol: Get out a large skillet or pan, preferably cast iron, and place it over medium-high heat. Once hot toss in the chiles de arbol and toast them for 30 seconds to 1 minute. You just want them to slightly change in color and soften up. Once they do take them out of the pan/skillet and set them aside. If you overcook them and they become blackened toss them out and try again as they will give the salsa a bitter taste.
- Cook the garlic cloves in the same pan/skillet until golden brown in color, then take them out and set them aside.
- Add the ½ teaspoon of salt to your molcajete and crush the chiles de arbol until they become fine flakes. Follow this up by crushing the garlic into the salt and chilies until it forms a paste.
- Cook the jalapeno, onion, and tomatillos: In the same hot pan/skillet add the onion, jalapeno, and tomatillos. Cook all of these ingredients until softened and they have a nice char. And make sure to err on the side of over-charring them instead of under-charring them as it will give the salsa a great smoky flavor and deep dark color. Once they are all cooked take them out of the pan/skillet and set them aside.
- Add the jalapeno, onion, and tomatillos to the salsa: Remove the top stem of the cooked jalapeno and discard it. Also, feel free to remove some or all of the seeds from the jalapeno if you prefer your sala to be less spicy. Toss the jalapeno into the molcajete and crush it until broken down into small pieces. Next, add the tomatillos and crush them until they become smooth. Finally, dice the cooked onion and add it to the molcajete. You can try crushing the onion a bit, but I find it doesn’t work very well, which is why we dice it up before adding it to the salsa.
- Cook the tomato: The last ingredient we need to cook is the tomato. And while you can cook it in your pan/skillet I find that as the skin charrs it often peels off and gets stuck to the pan/skillet. Which is a mess to clean up. So instead I prefer to boil the tomato in a small pot. Either method is fine, you just need to cook the tomato until it is soft and the skin can be easily peeled off and discarded (roughly 10 to 15 minutes).
- Finish the salsa by adding the cooked skinless tomato to your molcajete, and crush it until it is a consistency that you like. Finally taste the salsa and add additional salt to your personal preference.
- Use your salsa molcajete as you like and enjoy!