Fermented Salsa is more rightly referred to as Pickled Salsa. It not only more accurately describes what it is, it causes fewer raised eyebrows among the tea-totaling element, which is important in my family!
Pickled Salsa it is! It ends up like Salsa Fresca, or Pico de Gallo, with a quirky difference – the result of the pickled tomatoes.
You can make it using pretty much any salsa recipe. The key is to get about 1 tsp of salt per quart of finished salsa stirred into it. As with all pickled items, salt, and dunking the food, is the magic that gets the job done right.
So… the basic recipe includes:
- Chopped tomatoes – they can be skinned and seeded, or not. Your choice.
- Chopped onions
- Chopped bell pepper – green, red, yellow, purple, whatever you can get.
- Chopped jalapeno, anaheim, habanero, or other types of hot peppers
- Cilantro – fresh, or dried, chopped
- Salt
You can balance the proportions however you like. The one thing that makes it great pickled salsa is to make sure that tomatoes make up no more than 1/3 of the bulk of the salsa.
On the batch pictured I used 4 tomatoes, 2 onions, 3 large bell peppers, 2 large jalapenos, a couple tablespoons of dried cilantro (really you put it in until it looks right to you), and of course, the salt. It really would have been better with only three tomatoes instead of four, and some red bell pepper – but you work with what you have.
I capped and cored the jalapenos, and tossed them in the blender with 1 whole cored tomato, and ran that until it was completely liquid – I really didn’t want chunks of jalapeno, because I am recovering from intestinal disease, and need to be careful about pieces of hot pepper. This also had the happy consequence of saving me from having to touch the jalapenos with my hands while chopping them.
The rest of the veggies were chopped and mixed together with the liquid and the salt. At this point I had a really nice fresh salsa.
The salsa goes into the jar. I use a half gallon Ball mason jar, with a Fermenta Dunk Extender, and Dunker (I use more than one dunker) and I put on a Wide Mouth Fermenta Lock Cap.
The second day, the salsa begins to smell a little alcoholic (sampled during this phase, it will be zingy, with alcoholic bubbles). The Fermenta Lock lets the gasses out, and as it does, the valve becomes lightly scented with the smell of the salsa. But you can open it and smell it if you want also – Salsa is not so fussy that it can’t stand being opened to check the progress with your nose. I would not recommend digging around in it until after the third day though!
About the fourth day, the alcoholic smell subsides, and it smells like… Salsa! The tomatoes have a distinctive pickled aroma, which is either acceptable and interesting, or completely vomitous to some people. This is one reason why you need to be sure to not use too many tomatoes in the salsa. Interestingly, it is only at this point that you really start to see fermentation bubbles to any great extent. Salsa does not bubble as much early on as some foods, in part because it starts out higher in acid.
It is usable at this point, but is so much better if it pickles somewhat longer. This particular combination made a medium heat salsa. A single jalapeno would make mild salsa, and no jalapenos would make a no-heat salsa.
After about a week, the salsa goes in the fridge, where it continues to mature.
The onions and peppers in this stay crisp and crunchy. It works well both as a condiment straight from the bottle and onto foods, and as a seasoning in cooked foods, added while the food is cooking.
If the pickled tomato smell makes you gasp or gag, and want to run for the bathroom, try making salsa using red peppers instead of the tomatoes. Salsa is wonderfully flexible stuff, you can juggle the ingredients around all you like, make it with what you just happen to have, or leave out what you can’t stand. It isn’t like running a company where it has to be the same all the time. Give yourself permission to just go with what you’ve got.