How To Make Fermented Salsa

Jar of fermented salsa packed into a jar

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Most store bought salsa is preserved with vinegar and heat. This adds the acidity to the salsa which keeps it from spoiling and destroys any unwanted bacteria found in the salsa. When salsa is fermented the acidifying agent is the lactic acid which is produced by lactic acid bacteria. This recipe makes your salsa more digestible, better for you and can be adjusted to your taste (mild – spicy and slightly acidic to highly acidic).

Equipment:

Cutting board
Kitchen knife
Flip top jar or mason jar with lid
Bowl

Ingredients:

4-5 medium sized Tomatoes
2-3 Garlic cloves
One Bell peppers (any color)
1 onion
1-2 Hot peppers of your choice
1 Tbsp Paprika
¼ Cup Cilantro or Parsley (not both)
1-2 Tbsp Cumin
2% salt by weight

Instructions:

Cut tomatoes into cubes. For a thicker salsa use roma tomatoes as they have less liquid in them than the garden style tomato.

Crush and mince the garlic.

Slice and rough chop the bell peppers. Deseed peppers as the white pith of a bell pepper is thick and fibrous.

Chopped orange bell pepper on a cutting board with knife and other vegetables

Remove the pith of the hot peppers if you want to lower the spice level in the peppers. Chop the hot peppers into small slices or chunks depending on the pepper used.

Chopped jalapenos on cutting board with knife

Finely mince the cilantro or parsley

Closeup of minced parsly on a cutting board

Tare to mixing bowl on the scale

place all chopped vegetables into the bowl

Salsa ingredients: tomatos, garlic, onion, peppers and parsly in a bowl on a cutting board

Add spices and mix well and weigh the bowl again

digital scale with bowl full of salsa ingredients being weighed. Reading 753grams

Calculate 2% salt by weight and add to the bowl

Bowl of salt on a digital scale showing 15 grams

Mix thoroughly and pack into the jar

Salsa packed into a mason jar with an airlocked lid

Seal the lid and store at 62-68℉ (16-20℃) for three days

If you are using a canning jar without an air lock burp the jar daily

After three days begin tasting the salsa when it reaches the acidity level you want refrigerate

The salsa will continue to ferment in the fridge slowly getting increasingly acidic so eat it quickly

Michael Grant

Mike has been an enthusiast of fermentation for over ten years. With humble beginnings of making kombucha for himself to the intricacies of making miso, vinegar and kefir. He makes a wide variety of fermented foods and drinks for his own consumption and family and friends. Being a serial learner he began experimenting with a wide variety of fermented products and learning widely from books, online from content and scientific studies about fermentation, its health benefits, how to use fermented food products in everyday life and the various techniques used to produce them both traditionally and commercially. With a focus on producing his own fermented products in an urban environment with little access to garden space he began Urban Fermentation to help others who want to get the benefits of fermentation in their lives. He provides a wide variety of content covering fermented drinks like kombucha and water kefir, milk kefir and yogurt, vinegar production and lacto-fermentation such as pickles, sauerkraut for those who have to rely on others for food production. With an insatiable hunger to know more about fermentation from all nations and cultures he also has learned to make natto, miso and soy sauce, with more to come as the body of knowledge about fermentation is constantly expanding and becoming more popular as time passes.

Equipment:

Ingredients:

Instructions:

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