There are thousands of salsa recipes out there. Green, red, fresh, cooked, hot, mild, simple, complex, you name it. We will be featuring many of them here. Some require soaking of dried chiles, roasting, cooking, pureeing, straining, and if you just want some chips and dip, you have to plan way ahead. For our first recipe, this is a fresh salsa that literally takes ten minutes from “Hmm, I’d love some salsa”, to dunking your first chip. The star of the show is the Cuisinart Mini-prep, a two cup food processor that you can buy at Costco for under twenty bucks. It is an indispensable tool in Hot Eddie’s kitchen. I use it for this salsa, chopping a batch of garlic when I need a bunch of it, making pesto, breadcrumbs, chopped nuts, anything where you don’t want to drag out the full size processor. Clean up is a snap, (you can throw the bowl and blade in the top rack of the dishwasher) and while I wouldn’t make hummus in it, (it just doesn’t have the power) it is a great little workhorse for many tasks.

You can use this recipe as a template and vary the ingredients to suit your taste. Add an Habanero chile for extra heat and a late burn. Remove the seeds and pith of the chiles to make a milder salsa. Substitute red onion instead of the scallion. Leave out the cilantro. Add some ground cumin, coriander, or chili powder. Make it your own. We like the simplicity and fresh taste of it just the way it is.

It is vegan friendly, non-dairy, gluten free, fat-free, and if you omit the salt, low sodium.

It makes a great dip for chips, goes brilliantly on tacos, inside a burrito, or on a tostada.

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Ten-Minute Salsa – Total prep time 10 minutes – (Makes about 2 cups)

4-5 very ripe tomatoes.

1-2 serrano chiles (can substitute Jalepeños or other hot pepper)

1 medium green onion

½ cup washed cilantro leaves (more or less as you like)

2 cloves peeled garlic

salt and pepper to taste

Roughly chop chiles and garlic and put into the Mini-Prep. Process for 5 seconds to chop finely. This insures you won’t get any big chunks of chiles or garlic in the salsa.

Core and roughly chop tomatoes, scallions, and cilantro and put into the bowl of Mini-prep with a big pinch of salt and a couple of grinds of black pepper

Pulse a few times until you get the desired consistency. You can make it rough like a pico de gallo, or process for 5-10 seconds to make a smoother and more liquid salsa.

That’s it. No muss, no fuss. It keeps for several days in the refrigerator, if it lasts that long, and the wonderful thing is that when you run out, you can whip up another batch in minutes.

We’ll be sharing some of those more complex chile recipes in the coming days and weeks, but as a starter salsa, you can’t beat this one.

Enjoy.