Almost Homemade Salsa

Dress up a jar of salsa in a hurry with fresh ingredients. Add some diced tomatoes fresh from your garden, and some green onion for color contrast. Fresh avocado is a must, and a squeeze of lime is delish. Add as much, or as little, to an ordinary jar of salsa and stretch how far it goes. Enjoy your Almost Homemade Salsa and the homemade quality without quite so much work as starting from scratch.

Starting out with a jar of your favorite salsa, the base is already there.

A lot of the “hard” work is already done for you, and I’m good with that. Especially when I’m in a hurry, which seems to be most of the time. Yet, anything homemade has that special ingredient of love. So love yourself and add your favorites. 

Serve this Almost Homemade Salsa with some Homemade Cheese Enchiladas, Homemade Green Chicken Enchiladas, or this amazing Chicken Chilaquiles Casserole recipe.

Salsa is the perfect compliment to any Mexican meal, along with being an appetizer with tortilla chips.

What is Almost Homemade Salsa?

First, start with a jar of salsa. Mild, medium, or hot. Thick and chunky, or more blended. Better yet, get whatever’s on sale. 

Second, decide what your favorite parts of salsa are. This recipe added tomatoes, avocado, green onion, lime juice, and a dash of garlic powder. Other ingredients, like jalapeno, green chilies, and/or red onion might be more your style. 

But, don’t limit yourself to the traditional ingredients. Think outside the box, like mango, bell pepper, and apple.

Speaking of apples, check out my recipe for Apple Salsa with Cilantro. It’s perfect with tortilla chips, or as a side with pork chops.

Turn a jar of regular salsa into a strawberry salsa. It’s up to you, have fun with it.

Almost Homemade Salsa should be easy to eat.

If you plan on serving your Almost Homemade Salsa with tortilla chips, keep in mind how big you chop the tomatoes and avocado.

In other words, they are easier to scoop up when the pieces are smaller. 

Even the green onions, keep them smaller so that your chip does all the work. 

Do I have to remove the stems from the cilantro?

No. The stems actually taste just as good as the leaves, so leaving the stems on is a preference.

It’s much easier and faster to chop the top of a cilantro bunch, but then you get some stems.

Otherwise, you’ll have to pluck the leaves off, which takes a little more time, then chop through the leaves.

Either way, it’ll taste delicious. 

As you can see in the picture above, I tried to chop the ingredients to be approximately the same size.

Squeeze the lime juice directly onto the chopped avocado. The lime juice is a strong antioxidant that slows down the browning process. Doesn’t hurt that it also tastes darn good.

Sprinkle some garlic powder over the top of this salsa, then stir it up. 

That’s really about all there is to it: dump a jar of salsa into a bowl, and add some fresh ingredients to it. It’ll definitely have that “homemade” taste and look to it, plus it makes that one jar go a lot further. 

Also, don’t be surprised if everyone doesn’t aim for the avocadoes first. I tend to keep an extra avocado just in case they’re picked out, and I need to add more.

Neutralize spicy hot salsa.

Avoid the heat and keep it mild, but if you made it hot enough that your mouth is burning, here’s yet another reason to love chocolate.

The high fat content in milk chocolate helps to cut through the capsaicin, which causes the heat. 

So in other words, don’t forget dessert. To savor some sweet relief, try this delicious recipe for Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes, which is made with chocolate pudding frosting. That should work perfectly.

Or try this show stopper, a No Bake Chocolate Cherry Dessert or this decadent Chocolate Raspberry Trifle. 

Life is short, eat dessert first…unless you ate some hot salsa, in which case, save dessert till the end. 

Follow me on Pinterest and post a picture of your Almost Homemade Salsa. I’d love to hear what you think about it, and sincerely hope you enjoy this quick and easy recipe. 

 

Copyright © Sweet Ordeal. All content and images are copyright protected. Do not use any images without prior permission. If you want to republish this recipe, make sure to re-write the recipe in your own words and only list ingredients making sure to link back to this post for the original recipe and directions.