In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef Saúl Montiel demonstrates how to make three classic Mexican salsas–salsa fresca, salsa martajada, and salsa morita.
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00:00I'm Saul Montiel, I'm a professional chef and today I want to show you how to make
00:04delicious salsas. Salsa fresca, salsa martajada, and salsa morita. Fresh salsa,
00:10charred salsa, and cooked salsa. There is so many different kinds of salsas up
00:14there. All different from each other from texture, color, spiciness, but these three
00:18salsas are the most common salsas in Mexico. Let's make some salsa. This is
00:23salsa 101.
00:26The first salsa that I'm gonna make is gonna be salsa fresca. Salsa fresca
00:32means fresh salsa and that means that we can use vegetables, fruit, but we need to
00:38keep them raw. You can puree them or you can dice them. In this case I'm gonna do
00:42puree. I'm gonna use raw tomatillos. They're green. There are a little bit
00:48more on the bitter side than a regular tomato. It's very important to remove the
00:53husk out of the tomatillos. You don't want to blend this. This will be a very
00:56bitter flavor. This is your classic taquera salsa, the mild one. You can make
01:01this salsa without tomatillos if you can't find these. These are very hard to
01:04find. So we'll do three tomatillos. When it comes to jalapeño, if you want this
01:09jalapeño to be extra spicy you have to kind of rub it, kind of break veins so
01:16the jalapeño will be a little more spicy. But if you don't, just cut it in
01:20half. It's very hard to control the heat of any salsa, right? If the recipe says
01:24three jalapeños, you do one. You puree them, you taste it, and then you find out
01:28if it needs another one. So half. Then we're gonna do one garlic. Again,
01:34everything, everything is raw. And I'm gonna do a little bit of onion. The
01:39reason why I'm using white onion is because to me it has a little mild onion
01:44flavor and also when we puree this with the green stuff it looks also nicer. Now
01:49lime. How do you know your lime is going to be juicy? It's by the surface of the
01:55skin. It has to be smooth. If you see a lot of like little holes and thicker
02:01skin and more greener, it's gonna be dry. But this is smooth, slight green, it has a
02:07little bit of yellow, so this lime is going to be juicy. And you can also press
02:12them really hard. Now why did I'm adding lime to this? Because I'm using avocado
02:18so I don't want my avocados to oxidize. I don't want them to turn brown.
02:22Cilantro adds a nice refresh flavor to this. Now I'm using the stems and the
02:28leaves. The stems are closer to the soil, to earth, so it's full of flavor. The last
02:32and main ingredient of this salsa, it's the avocado. The first thing that I'm
02:37looking for is where is the avocado from? I have really good experience from
02:40avocados from Michoacan, Mexico. So it has to be from Mexico. The stem right here
02:46needs to be more on the yellow green side. The skin of the avocado has to be
02:50like a little rusty like this one, but dark brown without being black. This one
02:55looks perfect. When you're making salsa fresca, we want the avocado flavor to be
02:5980% of the salsa. And then we want the tomatillo, the onion, the jalapeno, the
03:05cilantro, the lime to be part of the salsa. I'm gonna do a little bit of salt, a
03:09little bit of water in the beginning. And then if we think it needs more, we'll add
03:14some more. And we're gonna start slow.
03:21It looks very buttery, creamy, fluffy, fresh. Again, this salsa can be for anything.
03:31The level of spiciness, it's there. It's mild. This is my mild salsa, so it's
03:36perfect.
03:39The salsa that we're about to make is going to be a medium heat salsa. I call
03:45it salsa martajada, which is a semi-crushed or semi-blend salsa. The way
03:51how I prepare my salsa martajada is basically I char the vegetables. It will
03:55add this char, smoky flavor to my salsa, but also at the same time keeping the
04:00vegetables semi-raw. So it's like a really pleasant balance of salsa when
04:06you're eating it. So I'm gonna start with the onion. The reason why I use red
04:09onion for this salsa is because it has a stronger onion flavor. I need that
04:13stronger flavor because the salsa is gonna be spicier. I'm gonna put more
04:16peppers. So when you put more spicy, you have to use stronger ingredients to
04:20balance out the spiciness too. I'm just gonna remove the stems out of this jalapeno.
04:24I'll do this to it. Then the tomatoes. These are Roma tomatoes. It's the classic
04:28way, but you can use any other red tomatoes. Okay, now the garlic. I'm not
04:34mashing this because I want to char them. I don't want this to burn. I'm gonna do
04:39six cloves of garlic. For this salsa, I'm also gonna use some fresh cilantro. I
04:43want this salsa to be really tasty and also colorful. I'm also gonna use some of
04:47the stems. And now, the avocado. We're gonna dice it because I want chunks of
04:51avocado in my salsa. Our bison plus is ready. Now we're gonna char the
04:56vegetables for our salsa martajada. And the reason why I'm using cast-iron pan
05:00is because it holds heat for a longer time and also it helps to char the
05:05vegetables the way it should be. And we're gonna start with the vegetable
05:09that takes longer to cook, which is onion, chef, onion. The neutral oil is going to
05:15help the vegetables get a better char and a little faster. We're starting with
05:19the red onion and now the jalapeno. And the tomatoes. This will probably take 10
05:26to 15 minutes. It all depends on how these vegetables are becoming. We're gonna do a little
05:31more oil. This is just turning, turning, turning. We're gonna throw some salt. It's
05:37going to help get the moist out of the vegetables. It's gonna cook a little
05:40faster. And now we're gonna throw our garlic. This will probably cook faster
05:45than the other one. So right now I'm just gonna keep my eye on the garlic. I want
05:49the vegetables to be charred halfway without losing their shape and without
05:54cooking all the way through. So it looks like we're almost done. The onions are
05:58ready. So we're gonna remove the onions and the garlic. Okay, this tomato, you see
06:02how sad it looks? That's ready. This is telling me, take me out of there. The
06:06name of the salsa is martajada. That means that the tomatoes, the onions are
06:10crushed. It's no puree and it's no mash. It's something in between. We have our
06:14vegetables already cooled down. Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna semi-puree
06:17them. I'm gonna do one jalapeno. Then we'll leave this to the last just in case
06:21if we need more heat. Because once the heat is here and I already mix it, there's no
06:24way how you can go back in time. See? Save this too, just in case. Now we're gonna
06:30do a little bit of salt. I typically use molcajete, a more old pestle, but I don't
06:35have that today. But I have this food processor which is gonna do almost the
06:38same job. We're gonna do one, two, three. Oh more, a little more. Okay, that's perfect.
06:50I'm gonna test this, see if it needs more salt, more heat. It's perfect. Medium heat is
06:56there without oven powering and then I taste the char. It's kind of a fresh at
07:02the same time but char. Now every salsa needs some kind of acidity. I have the
07:06acidity from the tomatoes but I didn't put no lemon. So I'm gonna put red wine
07:10vinegar and this is gonna bright the flavor of all the vegetables. I'm gonna
07:14have that kick. And now we're gonna do a little bit of cilantro. Now some avocado.
07:19This salsa looks amazing. It looks chunky without being too chunky and I can see
07:23the avocados, I can see most of the ingredients. Let's see if it tastes as it
07:26looks. A little spicy. It's the medium salsa. The vinegar helps the salsa come up
07:35together. In texture wise, it's just on point. Scratch but not to be too over
07:40scratch and it's delicious. Perfect salsa.
07:44This is the final salsa. Salsa morita. The main pepper is the morita. It's very
07:50similar to a chipotle. It has a kind of smoke element but also spicy but it's a
07:55medium spicy. So this is when the chile de arbol comes in because this is spicy.
08:00We're only using two. A little bit of spicy and flavor, heat and then also
08:08another kind of spicy. Serranos. Serranos has a pepper spicy flavor and guajillo.
08:15Guajillo for two things. Texture and color. It's gonna make it more red. My
08:20first step, cut my vegetables, deseed my guajillos and then put on a tray and
08:24broil them. The reason why I use red onion for this is because like I say it
08:29has a stronger flavor. It will also help the balance of the heat. Then the
08:33tomatoes. Serrano. Okay so we have the garlic. I'm gonna add a little bit of
08:38nutrient oil and some salt. The salt is gonna sweat them. My vegetables are
08:43broiling. In the meantime I'm gonna work on my dry chiles. So I'm gonna start with
08:47the guajillos. I'm gonna remove the stem. The reason why I'm removing the seeds
08:51because the seeds of the guajillo, since it's a long pepper, it has bigger seeds
08:56and it has a lot of seeds. We're gonna go low heat medium heat. Something in
09:01between. You're dealing with dry peppers right? This is like paper because it's
09:05dry so you can burn it really easy. And what happens when you burn it, they taste
09:08bitter. So this texture and color. Morita is the main chili. It adds smokiness
09:15flavor and spiciness. The spiciness of this is kind of a little bit sweet for some
09:19reason because this is being dried so it's nice and sweet. And now for spiciness
09:23chile de arbol. So I'm going to blitz these peppers because I want the flavors
09:28to bloom. If you burn it they will be bitter. So that's why you start with low
09:33heat. So basically I want to make sure everybody gets the same heat. This is a
09:38very quick process. Like you see here how easy it was almost burn. Even the color
09:42look the color is like waking up. This is ready. This is ready. This oil right here
09:49I'm not gonna just toss it. I'm gonna save it because it has a chili oil
09:53flavor. Our vegetables are broiler. Our peppers are blister. Alright so I want to
09:59start with the tomatoes. Again the ingredients are very similar on all the
10:03salsas but this is a little bit more complex because we cooking it twice. We
10:08broil them and then we're gonna simmer it. I'm gonna put all this around here
10:12because this salsa is the spicy one. I'm gonna take that chili oil that was there.
10:16I don't like to waste. And then I'm gonna do all the chilies. A little bit of white
10:22vinegar. I want the salsa to last longer and also I want the vinegar to bring the
10:27flavors out of this even better. A little bit of water. The water is gonna
10:30help to blend all this together. A little bit of salt. Even though I already put. Now we're
10:35going to puree this.
10:42That's it. Let's try it. Ay ay ay. I feel like it's gonna be too spicy. Ay way. The
10:52consistency is perfect. Very similar to a mole. The spiciness it's right on point.
10:57Almost little too spicy. But here's the thing with this salsa. When you let it
11:02sit overnight and you eat it the next day for some reason the heat level goes
11:05lower. So what I'm gonna do right now I'm going to sancochar the salsa. I'm gonna
11:10refry the salsa because this salsa has to be complex and by cooking it on a
11:15medium heat it will bring those flavors even stronger and deeper. I'm gonna do a
11:20little bit of oil. Shut the heat off. You see that little smoke? That's gonna add
11:25some smokiness. This process is adding another level of flavor. Now that our
11:32salsa is simmering we're gonna do this for 15 minutes and then it's going to be
11:36ready. It's been 15 minutes. Our salsa is looking pretty good. The color already
11:40changed. It's darker so that means it's gonna have a lot of flavor. The texture
11:44it's right on point. It's smooth without being too dry. It will hold perfectly
11:49on a taco on a tostada. I'm gonna let this cool down and then I'm gonna taste it.
11:55Just the complexity. It's so different for the other salsas. This salsa has the
12:00perfect consistency, the perfect level of spiciness for a salsa morita. The color
12:05and the texture. It's just we nail it. Alright we made it. I just show you how
12:10to make three different kind of salsas and if you learn how to make these
12:14salsas with every single different technique you can become a salsa maestro
12:19or maestra. When I see these salsas it reminds me of when you go a taco stand
12:23or you go to a Mexican restaurant. Each salsa plays a different reason into your
12:28taco.