Other than bread them and fry them of course!
Surely I’m not the only person facing a bumper crop of unripe green tomatoes. Last year, we just left them on the vine to rot and decay. This year, we decided to harvest them all and see if some of them would ripen. Some of them have ripened, but quite a few of them did not.
So I decided to try a green tomato salsa. I had plenty of green tomatoes from the garden, as well as hot peppers and onions. Everything else I needed was found in the pantry, and I decided to just go ahead and do it. While I was going for all or nothing, I also decided to double it as well.
The salsa is delicious! I used a good handful of serrano chiles- seeds and all, so mine is on the spicy side. It’s also thick- really thick and chunky and it has it’s own unique flavor that I can’t say I’ve ever had before. I love regular red salsa, and I love tomatillo salsa verde, but this green tomato salsa may very well steal my heart. It is unlike either of the other kinds of salsa I make- so I definitely encourage you to give it a try.
I found the recipe on Gardenweb, and given what I now know about canning salsa, I adjusted a few things to taste- reducing some things, but not reducing anything of importance. To take a short cut for this salsa, I also used my food processor to chop everything up. Green, unripe tomatoes are not as juicy as ripe tomatoes, so there was less liquid in the recipe overall. be aware that when I say green tomatoes, I mean unripe tomatoes- not the green varieties of ripe tomatoes like green zebras. Using ripe tomatoes would cause the PH and safety of the salsa to be in question- and we definitely don’t want that happening. The original recipe also called for just 1 cup of lemon juice as the acid. I decided to add white vinegar- and it worked perfectly.
Green Tomato Salsa
5 cups chopped green tomatoes 1 1/2 cups chiles (I just used total about 15 serrano chiles with seeds and ribs) 1/2 cup jalapenos (I omitted) 4 cups onions 3/4 cup bottled lemon juice 1/2 cup white vinegar 6 cloves garlic, minced 1 Tablespoon cumin 3 Tablespoons Mexican oregano 1 Tablespoon salt 1 teaspoon black pepperBring all the ingredients to a boil in a large pot. Cook and stir for about 20 minutes, keeping it at a gentle boil the whole time.
Ladle into hot pint jars, add lids, and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.
Makes about 5 pints.
yummy – thanks for the recipe. I will definately try this one out as I also have an abundance of green tomatoes.
Something that I learned recently from a friend if yoy have mnore unripe tomatoes – store them in a box and wrap or layer the with newspaper. The fruit will continue to ripen well into the winter. Store in cool/dry place to avoid rot.
Hope this helps.
What a great idea…I am sure that the green tomato salsa will have a more crunchy feeling than the ones made with ripe tomatoes 🙂