Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

We are home from the hospital and enjoying our time with our new baby boy. We are all doing well, just a little tired. Luckily, we have a special guest post for you today from Kate and Sara, the lovely ladies from Our Best Bites. Enjoy!

Hey, y’all! This is Kate from Our Best Bites and my blogging partner Sara and I are thrilled to be guest posting today because it means Maria and Josh are busy with their new little pea.

Every year, I have always been incredibly jealous of all my friends who tell me all about harvesting their gardens and canning all their fresh produce and eating fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinis, and peppers. So this year, I decided I would grow a garden and that I would weed and water it faithfully and in the fall, I would can lots of stuff. My garden has been dead since June. What’s worse is that I’m not even really all that sad about it.

I have decided that there are gardeners and there are people who will eat the food from other people’s gardens. I definitely fall into the latter category. I’ll shop local, buy from roadside stands, and hit up the farmer’s markets, but I have a hopelessly black thumb and an ambivalence for keeping plants alive, both of which don’t help when it comes to gardens. (Side note: This is Kate, not Sara–in addition to being a fancy-pants blogger, Sara is also a horticulturist, so she’s way better at not killing her garden than I am).

Anyway.

Before this hot, rainless summer hit the Southeast United States and my poor garden shriveled up, I planted tomatillos with the sole intention of making this salsa. Lucky for me, the Garden Murderer, tomatillos are in season, widely available, and inexpensive right now.

If you’ve never worked with tomatillos before, they are tangy little lime-green buggers that have a papery skin that are usually found near the ethnic produce like ginger, jalapeno peppers, and fancy mushrooms. Because they’re often completely covered by the papery skin, it can be hard to determine whether they’re good or not, but if they aren’t shrunken into the skin and there are no soft spots, sticky fluid, or obvious grossness, they should be fine. However, I definitely recommend buying about 1/4 pound more than you need just in case you run into trouble (as much trouble as you can run into when you’re working with tomatillos, that is) and to account for that skin.

For this salsa, you’ll need fresh cilantro, tomatillos, garlic, onions, and jalapenos, plus a little olive oil or non-fat cooking spray to help in roasting the vegetables.

Print Save

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

Ingredients:

1 lb. tomatillos, husks removed
3-4 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 small yellow or white onion, peeled and quartered
1 jalapeno pepper (if you're worried about heat, remove the seeds and membranes; I do and it's the perfect heat for me), cut in half lengthwise
A few spritzes of extra virgin olive oil
3/4 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/2 c. chopped cilantro
Juice of 1 lime
1/4-1/3 c. chopped green onions

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and set aside.
After husking the tomatillos, rinse them well in cool water (they can be sticky). Cut the stems and hard portions (if any) off the tomatillos and cut any very large ones in half.

Combine the tomatillos, unpeeled garlic, onion, and the jalapeno on the lined baking sheet. Spritz with extra virgin olive oil until lightly coated and toss the ingredients with your hands to make sure they are all well-coated.

Place the baking sheet in the preheated oven and bake for 15 minutes. If the vegetables have not charred, turn the broiler on to high and cook for 3-5 more minutes or until the skins of the peppers and tomatillos begin to turn black. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

When the vegetables have cooled, carefully squeeze the skin of the roasted garlic, releasing the soft, roasted garlic clove, into the jar of a blender or workbowl of a food processor. Add the remaining roasted vegetables and then add the salt, pepper, and lime juice. Process until the desired consistency is reached and then transfer to a serving dish. Stir in the chopped cilantro and green onions and serve with chips

Recipe from Our Best Bites

Print this Recipe

If you like this Roasted Tomatillo Salsa, you might also like:

Black Bean Corn Salsa from Two Peas and Their Pod
Tomatillo Salsa Verde from Add a Pinch
Pineapple Salsa from Two Peas and Their Pod