Salsa Verde
Everything blackened in a dry pan first, then blended raw garlic and cilantro. Simmer it to deepen it, or blend in avocado and make it a different sauce.
- Serves
- 8
- Total
- 25 min
Two lots of garlic, and that's the thing that makes this. Five cloves go in the dry pan with everything else and come out sweet and mellow. Five more go into the blender raw and sharp. You want both.
The pan has to be dry and hot. No oil. You're charring the skins, not sautéing, and the blackened patches are the flavor.
Two things you can do next
Simmer it. Ten minutes at a simmer deepens it and takes the raw edge off the fresh garlic. It goes darker and rounder, and it keeps longer.
Or blend in avocado. One or two, straight into the blender at the end. It becomes creamy, mild and completely different, and it's the version for tacos where the meat is already rich.
Do one or the other, not both. The avocado version wants the brightness that simmering removes.
If it's not right
- Sour and thin: not charred enough, or the tomatillos were underripe.
- Bitter: garlic burnt in the pan. It goes before everything else does.
- Flat: salt and lime, in that order.
- Too hot: seeds left in, or the serrano was a big one.
Ingredients
Method
-
Dry pan over high heat. No oil. Onion, tomatillos, chiles and the unpeeled garlic in, cut sides down where they have one.
-
Leave them alone until they blacken in patches, then turn. The tomatillos will soften and their skins will blister and split. Garlic comes out earlier than the rest, since it burns first.
-
Peel the charred garlic.
-
Everything into the blender with the raw garlic, cilantro, lime, oregano, salt and pepper.
-
Blend to whatever texture you want. I take it smooth.
-
Taste. It usually wants more salt and more lime than you expect.
Goes with
- Also good with
- Buy real chiles, Where less is more, and what to skip entirely
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