Making Roasted Veggie Salsa

K. and I have been on a six-year quest to make the perfect salsa, and we may be close with this version.

So I thought I’d share the process, even though the lighting in our kitchen is the mortal enemy of white-balance.

Anyway. Sally gave us the idea recently of slow-roasting tomatoes, peppers, and onions together. And we thought this might make a nice flavor base for salsa.

I coarsely chopped up one onion, four small tomatoes, and four assorted peppers. (That’s one Anaheim, one Japapeno, one Banana pepper, and one Poblano. We removed all the inner spines and seeds to keep the heat down.)

Then I roasted them at 350 degrees for about 90 minutes, stirring every half-hour or so. The veggies should be soft and slightly browned.

(Incidentally, if you’ve never worked with chile peppers before, use extreme caution! The capsicum in them can burn your fingers, and anything you touch with your fingers. Wear latex gloves!

(Or, if you have impervious Superman hands like K, you can just cut them under water.)

Once all this stuff was roasted and cooled, K. gently chopped it into salsa-size bits.

…While I cut up four more small tomatoes.

The veggies make quite a bit of juice as they roast, so it’s a good idea to remove the seeds from your fresh tomatoes as you dice them, to keep them on the drier side. But, keep these liquids handy in case you need to add them back in later.

Meanwhile, scrape up every last bit of the roasting liquid. I tell you, that stuff is heavenly.

We also chopped up another small raw onion, a couple medium garlic cloves, and a medium green bell pepper – these add a nice, crunchy texture.

Then we combined the roasted ingredients with the raw, and stirred them together with the roasting liquid and plenty of salt and pepper.

From there, we just kept tasting and adding. A little lime juice brightened the flavor, and a dash of hot sauce added a little zing. If things seem to dry, you can add some of the fresh tomato juices back in.

This stuff was amazing the same day, but even better the next day.