Roasted Tomato Salsa
Everything goes under the broiler until it's properly blackened — that char is the whole flavor of the salsa, not a mistake to avoid. Blended in two stages so it comes out smooth but not baby food. Garden-fresh tomatoes make the best version of this by a wide margin.
Ingredients
Instructions
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Prep and arrange: Cut the tomatoes, tomatillos, and onion as above. Arrange everything on a foil-lined sheet pan skin side up, along with the stemmed serranos and the unpeeled garlic cloves. Leaving the garlic in its husk lets it steam and soften inside instead of scorching.
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Broil about 8 minutes: Put the pan a few inches under a preheated broiler. You want the tomatoes and tomatillos blackened — not lightly spotted. Blistered, collapsing, patches of true black. That char is where the flavor comes from.
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Pull the garlic early: Take the garlic cloves out after 3-4 minutes. They're small and will burn well before the tomatoes are ready, and burnt garlic turns the whole batch bitter.
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First blend — the smooth base: Into the blender put all the tomatillos, half the tomatoes, half the onion, and the serranos. Squeeze the garlic out of its husks and add it, along with the lime juice and salt. Blend until smooth.
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Second blend — the texture: Add the remaining tomatoes and onion. Pulse — don't blend — until it reaches the consistency you want. Stopping while there's still some body to it is what separates this from tomato soup.
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Taste and adjust: Salt is the main lever; add more a pinch at a time. If you're using bouillon, stir it in now and let it dissolve.
Notes
The bouillon trick: A teaspoon of chicken bouillon (or one cube) is what gives it that addictive restaurant-style flavor. It's the savory background note you can never quite place in taqueria salsa. Optional, but it's the difference between good homemade salsa and the kind people keep going back to.
Heat control: The serranos are the dial — 5 for medium, 8 for genuinely hot. For a milder batch, seed some of them; most of the heat lives in the seeds and white pith. Start low if you're unsure, since you can blend in another roasted pepper but can't take one out.
Salt by weight: 12-15g is roughly 4-5 tsp of Diamond Crystal, 2½-3 tsp of Morton kosher, or 2-2½ tsp of table salt. Diamond Crystal crystals are large and airy — about half the weight of table salt for the same volume — so measuring by spoon without checking which box you have is how a batch ends up wildly off. Weighing avoids the guesswork. This is a lot of salt for the volume, and it needs to be.
Why skin side up: The skins take the direct heat and blister, which is exactly what you want. Cut side up just dries the flesh out and leaks juice onto the pan.
Garden fresh is best: This recipe rewards good tomatoes more than almost anything else you can do to it. Peak-season garden romas make a noticeably better salsa than supermarket ones in February.
Storage: Keeps about a week in the refrigerator in a sealed jar. The flavor is better on day two once everything has settled together. Freezes well for 3 months, though it loosens slightly on thawing.
Serving: Chips, obviously — but also excellent spooned over eggs, on black cod fish tacos, or as a base for braising chicken thighs.
Source
Family recipe.