This fresh homemade salsa recipe makes a tasty Mexican salsa perfect served with Mexican food or eaten with chips or as a salad topping! My husband and I have enjoyed this recipe our entire married life and it is delicious!
Save money with this delicious and easy homemade salsa recipe! Fresh salsa is a tasty way to use all of those tomatoes, onions, and peppers from your garden!
PrintEasy Homemade Salsa Recipe
- Yield: 3 pints
Ingredients
4 cups tomatoes (canned with juice may also be used
1 green pepper, chopped
1 large onion, diced
2 to 3 Tbsp. lime juice (to taste)
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
2 Tbsp. cilantro, chopped
1 small, fresh jalapeno pepper, minced
salt and pepper
Instructions
- Cook all the ingredients in a large saucepan on medium heat for 20 minutes.
- Pour into hot, sterile quart jars and seal.
- Process in a pressure canner for 25 minutes. We use salsa frequently enough that we don’t have to can it. If you don’t can it, store it in the refrigerator.
For more quick and easy recipes like this easy homemade salsa recipe, check out our cookbooks!
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I am interested in depression era recipes. How they survived the great depression.
Actually Katy many of the recipes in Dining are recipes from that time period. The recipes are from my grandmother, grandmother in law all who used them back then.I am continually surprised at how often someone post a “new” recipe and I find the same recipe in a cookbook from that time period or earlier.
We forget that even during the depression they served things like mashed potatoes, roast beef with potatoes and carrots, applesauce cake, gingerbread, bologna, pancakes, waffles etc. The main difference was they didn’t waste the food they had, they didn’t buy a huge amount of unnecessary (junk) food, they stretched the food they had the same way we teach you to use a chicken for 3 meals, but the main thing I think was different they weren’t so picky.
By that I mean they didn’t turn their nose up at using bacon grease to cook their eggs in or to smear on bread in place of butter. They used every drop of anything they had. If they peeled an apple or an orange the used the peel for something and didn’t just toss it. My mom tells how they ate every part of the chicken – liver, gizzard and event the feet. She even taught me to crack the bones open and eat the marrow out.They didn’t worry if they ate “white” foods like mashed potatoes, white rice, white bread. They made good fillers. They didn’t go into debt to pay for “healthy” food they paid for any kind of food at all that they could afford and were thankful for it.
I know that wasn’t maybe what your real question was but we so often think of recipes from that era as being so much betterand healtier then the food we eat now but it really was a lot of the same things. Like I said earlier there really weren’t that many completely different ways of cooking. They had jello, a huge variety of canned goods (canned soups) even boxed cereals by the depression and they were used the same way we use them today. Many of the cream of chicken or mushroom soup recipes we have in our book and others you see aren’t new but came out of the depression era or earlier because you could use them to stretch your meat and noodles. Gravy was eaten a lot because dipping bread or biscuits in if would fill everyone up. Unless you lived on a farm which many didn’t canned things were all they had and most of the time cheaper then doing it yourself.
I would say 75% or more of our recipes in Dining on a Dime come from the depression or earlier. My gingerbread and gingerbread men recipe comes from a cookbook of about 1850. Most of the bread recipes, soup recipes, desserts, candies and many of the main dishes come from then or earlier. The vinegar candy we have been talking about was used a lot at that time.
The bottom line was they used the same recipes as we put in Dining (the basics) they just stretched what they had and wasted nothing. You didn’t toss pan drippings you could make it into gravy and serve it over potatoes, rice or biscuits and have a whole meal. They didn’t stew about getting their 7 servings of fruits and veggies each day but did use what they had on hand sometimes it was things like dandelion greens, water cress etc. You didn’t use 1/4 lb. of hamburger to make one hamburger you used 1/4 lb of hamburger to make 2-3 thin ones or better yet stretched in a casserole with some cream of chicken soup and lots of rice.
I’m a historian and I’ve discovered that a lot of Depression era recipes came from even earlier than that. Many of them came from pioneers who were frugal beyond belief. I just wanted to add that there are depression era cookbooks and even a you tube channel devoted to depression era cooking. Ask your grandmothers for their cookbooks and write down their recipes and you’ll have a good start on cooking from that era.
This is true. We tend to think of so many recipes come from the depression era but what happened was it wasn’t until the early 1900’s that they started having cookbooks available to the average person. The recipes in those were from even earlier but I think because the books we see come from that time period we think that that is when they are from.
In the same way I see all these cool “new” recipes and tips on pinterest that were old recipes and ideas I when I first saw them 50 years ago. The now generation think they are such new ideas.The one I love the most is the new idea of using vinegar and baking soda for everything.
One time my sister-in-law remarked to my mother that she noticed Mother always ate the back so she must love it. My mother came back quickly that when you have 7 children, that’s usually all that is left. 😂 She also ate the chicken feet and taught us that gizzards and livers were good. My dad’s favorite saying when we turned up our noses at something was – you’ll be glad to lick where that lay someday! As of 2022, I think that day is almost here. I’m glad I had parents that taught us to love good wholesome plain food. They took us for walks through the woods to gather mushrooms, pecans, and persimmons. We ate elderberries by the gallons because they were a treat. We froze turnip greens, lambs quarters, poke, and wild mustard greens for the winter. Eating at a restaurant was a once or twice a year treat – not just I’m too tired to cook tonight! Yep! Good parents!!!
It also depended on where you lived. My mother and MIL grew up during the depression and some of my MIL recipes my mother had never heard of because my mom grew up on a farm and my MIL grew up in the big city.
War cake was one example. Mom had all the eggs and milk her family needed and those were the ingredients that my MIL couldn’t get but mom couldn’t get raisins.
Another was hamburger gravy. Grandma figured grinding hamburger was too much extra work so never did it but MIL’s mother used it a lot to stretch that bit of hamburger. She also said it made the grease of the hamburger edible and it didn’t have to be drained off.
Apparently my grandmother didn’t use soap when she washed the dishes. She would use boiling water and when the girls were done the dishes the water was poured into the bucket of scraps they took to feed the pigs. And the drier foods were fed to the chickens. Like you said Jill nothing was wasted.
Mom also had lots of vegetable stews but rarely if ever pasta and rice. Potatoes were cheaper and more easily available.
There was always canned fruits and pickles which the kids would pick and grandma would teach them to put up for winter.
Men did a lot of hunting so families had coon, rabbits, pheasants and moose deer and once in a while bear. Onions were used as a staple in a diet not just for flavouring.
Rhubarb made it into a lot of family homes because it was the first fresh stuff that was available in the spring. It was a tonic that people preserved in many forms for the winter cold season as well.
The expression of come for dinner we will just a cup of water to the soup came about during the depression. Since soup was a dish you could stretch to feed more.
Bread was at every meal grandma fed 9 people every meal and when harvest or planting time it was upwards of 20. With the field hands so huge casseroles and stews and lots of potatoe salads were set out on the lawn. Anything cheap and filling.
Grandma made 6 loaves every 2 days set it to rise did the housework put the bread in to bake and when it was out went and did the farm chores.
It was also meals that could be put on it the morning and pulled out at supper so there was gravy for everything.
Like you said Jill nothing was wasted soup and stew was made from the worst looking of the vegetables not just the wilted from the fridge but the too small from the garden to look nice.
Katy, think back to things your grandmother cooked take out the spices except salt pepper onions and you will probably find that, that started as a depression era recipe.
Hi, as i dont have any canning capabilities can this recipe be frozen?
many thanks
I am enjoying your e-publication. Always enjoy finding ways to do things more economically and easier. I read your article about using rags around the home. I always have rags on hand for cleaning, but I do not use them to clean the floors. As a newlywed, I used to get down on hands and knees to scrub, but found that I was actually damaging my boney knees. A while back I found some neat little string mops at Dollar Tree, which I now use to clean my uncarpeted floors. A few drops of liquid detergent in water will do the job. These mops are $1.00 each and I have used mine for months. I always buy a small mop for my damp mopping because it is easier to wring out and handle. Tommie in Abilene, TX
This salsa is a lot like mine! I never cook mine. It really doesn’t last long enough… My recipe uses and color bell pepper for color, no garlic or salt. I also may use a poblano or aneheim pepper. Plum tomatoes make a real fresh salsa.
4lbs chopped plum/Italian tomatoes (can use canned)
1 onion diced
1/2 bunch of cilantro chopped
1 yellow or orange bell pepper diced-optional when on sale
1 Aneheim or poblano or other mild chili pepper diced
1 jalapeño minced
Juice of one lime more or less to taste
Fresh ground pepper to taste
Serve fresh, see if you have leftovers!
We have a big family.
Thank you for sharing this salsa recipe…. love it… Carol
I have been making this salsa every weekend for 2 months. We go through a lot! I don’t bother cooking it anymore. Everything is so fresh this time of year that it tastes great either way. I also add other veges depending what I have on hand. Cucumbers, squash, zucchini, corn and garlic are all great in this recipe. Thank you for sharing!
One of the things that really disturbs me is the trend to eliminate most carbohydrates. No potatoes, no bread, no rice. That is not a good thing at all. These trendy diets that you have to buy special food for are not frugal. I know potatoes, rice etc can be problematic if you eat too much. It is the affordable thing for me to buy though! Just wanted to share that thought. My grandparents lived a long life eating bacon, mashed potatoes, roast, white bread. No matter what kind of food we eat today if we don’t control stress in our lives it wont matter. Long live noodles!
Thanks for these Salsa Recipes and ideas. I have a friend that wanted help making her Salsa. She likes trying new things so now if she asks I can give her ideas.