Homemade Salsa

5 from 6 votes
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Use up your garden veggies and make homemade salsa with juicy tomatoes, onion, fresh garlic, bell pepper, and cilantro.

salsa in bowl with chips.
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Gorgeous Garden Salsa Recipe

Garden bursting with veggies? We’re here with a simple homemade salsa recipe that will take care of your overflowing produce!

We love homemade salsa because it’s truly the perfect vessel for crunchy tortilla tips, plus doubles as a topping for many things such as tacos, baked potatoes, fajitas, and more!

Our homemade salsa recipe is made with juicy garden tomatoes, 2 types of onion, garlic, bell pepper, and cilantro. Best part? No need to mince everything by hand when you can use a food processor!

Why you’ll love it!

Use up all your garden veggies!

Healthy

Fresh

Perfect snack

ingredients on countertop

Tomatoes: tomatoes are the basis of salsa and lucky for you, pretty much any kind of tomato works. We used a medium tomato on the vine, but you can also use roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, etc.

Bell Pepper: bell peppers are easy to grow, so we threw one in! Feel free to use any color.

Onion: we used two types of onion in this recipe – red onion and green onion.

Garlic: fresh garlic is absolutely necessary for homemade salsa!

Fresh cilantro: fresh herbs are key for homemade salsa!

Like it spicy?

Do you like spicy salsa? Here are some things you can add to up the heat!

  • Jalapeño peppers
  • Poblano peppers
  • Chili peppers
  • Red pepper flakes
veggies in food processor.

How to Make Homemade Salsa

This recipe for homemade salsa is ready in less than 10 minutes!

  1. Process veggies: add tomato, green onion, red onion, garlic, cilantro, and bell pepper, and process until combined.
  2. Add spices: add salt, cumin, chili powder, cayenne, and lime juice. Add the remaining tomato.
  3. Process again: process the salsa again until it reaches your desired consistency. You can either process it smooth (like restaurant salsa) or leave it chunky, more like pico de gallo.
  4. Serve: serve your garden salsa with your favorite tortilla chips or as a topping on your favorite meal.
salsa in food processor.

FAQ

What is homemade salsa made of?

Homemade salsa is made from a base of tomato, onion, garlic, and salt. Other ingredients such as fresh cilantro, different veggies, and spices can be added as well.

Do you have to cook salsa?

When making fresh, homemade salsa. There is no need to cook it.

What do you add to salsa to make it taste better?

We recommend adding fresh herbs, garlic, and salt to salsa to make it taste better.

How long does homemade salsa last?

If your homemade salsa is made fresh and NOT canned, it will last around 5 days in the fridge.

Storage

Store salsa in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days.

Looking to can your salsa?

If you are looking to can your homemade salsa, check out Wholefully’s canning salsa 101 post!

hand scooping salsa with chip.
5 from 6 votes

Fresh Homemade Salsa

This recipe for fresh homemade salsa is made with garden veggies featuring tomatoes, onion, garlic, cilantro, and bell pepper.
Prep: 20 minutes
Cook: 0 minutes
Total: 20 minutes
Servings: 6
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Ingredients 

  • 4 medium tomatoes*, quartered
  • ½ small red onion
  • 3 green onions
  • ¼ cup cilantro with stems
  • Zest of 1 small lime
  • 1 small bell pepper, we used orange
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 1 teaspoons salt, or more to taste
  • 1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
  • ½ teaspoon chili powder
  • teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
  • optional: small jalapeño, seeded

Instructions 

  • Place 3 of the tomatoes into a food processor* along with the red onion, green onion, cilantro, lime zest, bell pepper, and garlic. Pulse the ingredients together on low until all the ingredients are processed and combined, but not soupy.
    Fresh vegetables in a food processor.
  • Add the remaining tomato, 1 teaspoon of salt, cumin, chili powder, cayenne pepper, and lime juice and pulse the salsa again until the ingredients are processed and incorporated.
    Salsa in a food processor.
  • If you like chunks in your salsa, leave the salsa as is. If you like a smoother salsa, process until it reaches desired consistency. Taste test and adjust with salt.
  • Transfer the salsa to a jar and cover or serve immediately with tortilla chips.
    Nachos with salsa on a wooden cutting board.

Tips & Notes

  • We used vine on red medium tomatoes. You can use any type of tomato you would like for this recipe, just be sure to add a few at a time so you can monitor the water content of the tomatoes. If you add all the tomatoes at once and have watery tomatoes, you may end up with a very runny salsa.
  • You can also use a high-speed blender for this recipe (like a Vitamix). However, we do not recommend just any blender. If you have a food processor, we do prefer that!
  • If you like spice, you can add a jalapeño.

Watch It

Nutrition

Calories: 31 kcal, Carbohydrates: 7 g, Protein: 1 g, Fat: 0.4 g, Fiber: 2 g, Sugar: 4 g

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

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Photography: photos taken in this post are by Ashley McGlaughlin from The Edible Perspective.

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About Lee Funke

Lee is the founder of Fit Foodie Finds and based in Minneapolis, MN. She started this website in 2010 as a way to share her love for real food and wellness. The internet has changed so much since then and so has Fit Foodie Finds. Today we're a female-run recipe website publishing hundreds of tried and true recipes developed and tested by our team.

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Susan
Susan
May 12, 2023 2:10 pm

5 stars
My family loves fire roasted salsa so the only change I made was to roast the veggies then followed the recipe exactly. We are a spicy family so I did add the optional jalapeรฑo. Everyone LOVED it. I will be making this on repeat!

Marilyn Smith
August 1, 2022 3:36 pm

5 stars
After I put something in the place of the cilantro, I think I’d use parsley and chives, this would be excellent.