The Best Salsa Recipe! This homemade restaurant style Salsa is one of my favorite most frequently made recipes! It’s perfect served with tortilla chips or as a topping over your favorite Mexican like tacos, burritos, taquitos and so forth. The best party food around and a must have snack!
Salsa Recipe
Fact, the best salsa is made with fresh tomatoes. Okay that’s just my opinion but in the past I thought I could go the route of using all canned tomatoes but using fresh tomatoes makes a world of difference! Fresh tomatoes make the best salsa, especially when you use nicely ripened in season tomatoes.
This is hands down my favorite salsa recipe and I don’t know that I’ll ever need another one. It just has the perfect ratio and blend of everything.

It’s not too oniony or garlicy, nor too spicy for my kids, it doesn’t tasting like it came from a can and it has the perfect brightness with the fresh lime. Then it has a classic Mexican flavor with the cilantro and hint of chili powder and cumin.
The sugar I’d say is only needed if you are using store-bought tomatoes. If you grow your own or buy them at the farmers market the quality is a bit better and they’re a bit sweeter so the sugar isn’t needed.
Ingredients for Salsa
(Scroll below for full recipe)
- Fresh Roma tomatoes
- Fresh cilantro
- Jalapeno (if you don’t like heat you can replace it with 1/4 cup chopped bell pepper, or omit)
- Red onion
- Green onion
- Garlic
- Lime
- Chili powder and cumin
- Sugar
- Salt and pepper
How to Make Salsa
Making salsa at home couldn’t be easier! You just roughly chop the ingredients, toss them in a food processor and pulse it in quick bursts until it’s finely chopped up.
Tips to Make it the Best
- Use best quality ingredients.
- Look for ripe tomatoes that aren’t hard as rocks, they should be semi-soft (not squishy) and should have a nice red color.
- Adjust the jalapeno to suite your taste. If you love heat leave the seeds, if you don’t like any heat omit it and if desired replace with some chopped bell pepper.
- Use fresh garlic, skip the bottled stuff.
- Regarding the onions, if you don’t want to buy both kinds of onions just use about 1/2 cup red onion. Yellow onion can also be used in place of red onion, I just like how the red is a little more mild.
- Let it chill first for an even tastier, more refreshing salsa. I just always seem to like it better the second day.
- Then as I listed in the recipe I love this salsa with canned plain tomatoes, canned tomatoes with green chilies, or canned fire roasted tomatoes. All work great just use what you have.
How to Make Homemade Tortilla Chips
What to go all out? Try this with homemade tortilla chips, fried or baked. Everyone will be totally impressed! I don’t make them often but when I do makes the salsa that much better.
More Salsa Recipes to Try
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Salsa
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A super easy, super fresh, super delicious salsa. You'll never need another salsa recipe again! This has been my go-to recipe for years, it's definitely a family favorite. We make it almost every week. It's a staple recipe.
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 lbs ripe Roma tomatoes (about 5 - 6)
- 1 (14.5 oz) can petite diced tomatoes*
- 2 green onions, ends trimmed, chopped into thirds
- 1/3 cup chopped red onion (about 1/4 of a medium)
- 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and roughly chopped
- 1/3 cup fresh cilantro (about a handful)
- 1 large clove garlic, roughly chopped
- 2 Tbsp fresh lime juice
- 1/2 tsp chili powder
- 1/4 tsp ground cumin
- 1/2 tsp granulated sugar
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
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Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse in 1 second bursts until all ingredients are finely chopped.
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Serve with tortilla chips. Store in refrigerator up to 1 week.
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Recipe source: Cooking Classy
Recipe Notes
*Canned diced tomatoes with mild green chilis, or canned fire roasted tomatoes also work great as well.
For a thinner salsa you can add in a bit of tomato juice or tomato sauce if desired.
Connie Hubbard: Yes you can can this! September 20, 2018 at 4:32pm