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Homemade salsa made with canned tomatoes

Using canned tomatoes means homemade salsa can still be tasty and fresh minus the difficult task of chopping and seeding tomatoes. Adjust the consistency, and the spiciness, to your taste.

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In Praise of Leftovers
Eat this salsa fresh, or experiment with chips, cheese, and taco topping and make nachos.

Here is the dilemma:

Our family goes through a lot of salsa, mostly because one of the sacred rites around here is Sunday night nachos. (You should try it. Ten minutes, everyone loves it, and it's sometimes in front of the TV – heaven.) I hate chopping and seeding mealy tomatoes. It's a lot of work for a disappointing result. There is some delicious fresh salsa out there, but the kind I really like is $6 for a small tub! Wyatt and Yancey would slurp that in 10 seconds. And canned salsa has never floated my condiment boat. Too sweet, flat, or weird.

Enter "Almost-fresh salsa," a recipe given to me by Emily who got it from her ex-boyfriend who got it from his mom. And you guessed it – it uses canned tomatoes. I cannot keep enough canned tomatoes in the house. I've heard the packaging makes them bad for you, but have plugged my ears on that public service announcement. You only live once, right? If I don't smoke or eat fast food, I can be crazy and use canned tomatoes. 

This salsa meets my criteria of tasting good. Who cares if something is fresh but it tastes horrible! Or if it's "all natural" but you can only choke down a spoonful. About to step onto a soapbox here, but some of the recipes floating around on Pinterest or Foodgawker look absolutely awful. I'd rather have a banana for every meal than concoct some of the "good-for-you" things out there. (Speaking of bananas and Pinterest, this post is really funny.)

And if you have a salsa soapbox, you know I'd love to hear about it. 

Almost-fresh salsa
If you double or tripe this recipe (not a bad idea), don't double or triple the garlic. It will be inedible the next day. Maybe add just a tiny bit more. And you'll notice this doesn't have any lime. The acidity balance is perfect without it.

1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes, drained

1 seeded jalapeno (or to taste)

1 garlic clove

Big handful chopped fresh cilantro

1/4 cup finely sliced green onions

Coarse salt

In the bowl of a food processor (or by hand), chop the garlic and jalapeno. Add the drained tomatoes and pulse a few times until salsa reaches desired consistency (slightly chunky, not a puree.) Remove tomato mixture from bowl and add cilantro, green onion, and salt to taste. 

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