51 salsa recipes you can make at home

Salsa is one of those foods where there’s a big difference between fresh made and store bought. Homemade salsa recipes have a vibrancy that even the best brands at stores tend to lack.

Fortunately, salsa is cheap, quick and easy to make at home, and you’ll have a lot of fun tweaking recipes to your own taste.

The basic recipe

At heart, salsa is tomatoes, chilis and onions (with cilantro optional) with salt and lime juice. But there’s no end to variations you can make with it.

Roasted ingredients, like garlic or the tomatoes, make it richer and a bit smokier, while raw ingredients keep it sharp and vibrant. Keep in mind that as salsa sits in the refrigerator, the flavor changes.

Typically, it improves, becoming richer and more complex, but some salsa recipes should be served immediately to preserve that garden fresh flavor. So pay attention to how long the recipe tells you to refrigerate before serving.

51 Salsa Recipes

This Restaurant Style Salsa from The Pioneer Woman is surprisingly easy to make, and involves no cooking. And I heartily second her recommendation to melt cheese over chips. Also try it with my cheesy salsa chicken.
The Best Damn Salsa Ever! recipe from Kim’s Cravings uses garden tomatoes instead of canned and recommends getting them from a farmer’s market for the best flavor.
Teedo’s Famous Salsa looks like a typical red salsa, but it adds avocados and fire roasted tomatoes to the mix.
Not all salsas are red. This tomatillo salsa recipe involves no cooking – just that fresh, mild tomatillo flavor.
And this Roasted Salsa Verde recipe really brings out the tomatillo flavor. Also, it calls for Mexican oregano, which adds an amazing flavor. Try drizzling it over a steak.
Garden style salsa is just chopped veggies and lime juice served immediately. This recipe for garden fresh salsa tastes very fresh.
The Bald Gourmet was frustrated with all the canning salsa recipes out there, so he created his own perfect home canned chunky salsa recipe.
Just using a different pepper can totally change a salsa recipe. This habanero salsa is super spicy.
Pasilla peppers are more smoky than hot, so this roasted pasilla salsa recipe is wonderfully different.
This Salsa Negra recipe is a knockoff for the salsa negra made at Baja Fresh restaurants. The heavily roasted tomatoes give it a rich smoky flavor.
Another form of salsa is pico de gallo, and here’s an easy recipe for it.
For garlic lovers, this Roasted Garlic Blender Salsa uses a whole head of garlic. It also includes carrot, which may sound odd, until you consider that carrot juice is part of what makes V-8 so much better than plain tomato juice.
Sometimes you just want a really easy salsa you can make in the blender. This recipe for chunky blender salsa doesn’t have to be chunky; it all depends how long you blend it.
You can make a copycat version of On the Border’s salsa recipe at home.
Top chef Mary Sue Milliken has contributed her own recipe for fresh chopped tomato salsa.
This recipe for corn and black bean salsa and a touch of ranch dressing to give it a unique flavor.
Here’s another roasted garlic tomato salsa that calls for a whole head of oven roasted garlic. It also calls for oregano, which is a major secret ingredient in salsas.
This grilled salsa verde calls for both pasilla and jalapeño peppers.
Whenever you don’t have tomatillos, you can make a green tomato salsa verde. The taste is pretty similar.
This recipe for avocado salsa is really similar to what they serve in some restaurants, usually as a dip for an appetizer.
If you like your salsa sweet, try this grilled pineapple salsa recipe, which basically swaps out the tomato for pineapple.
Apparently, in Houston they add avocado to make their green salsa creamy. This Houston-Style Green Salsa sounds fantastic.
And in Chile, people make their own pebre, or Chilean chili salsa. There are many different versions and recipes for it – this recipe for pebre uses crushed red pepper answer sriracha sauce.
Here’s the supposedly actual recipe for Chevy’s salsa, which gets its smoky flavor from the charred drilling of the tomatoes, onions, and jalapeños.
For a very chunky salsa, try this Fresh Homemade Salsa recipe from Kelly the Kitchen Kop. It’s so easy – just chop, toss and serve.
There’s a form of black bean and corn salsa called Texas caviar. The secret ingredients are black-eyed peas and celery. And don’t be afraid to add chopped avocado.
This Salsa Roja recipe involves roasting some veggies to bring out their flavor and add some smokiness.
If you love the taste of corn that’s been grilled until it’s black around the edges, try this charred corn salsa. You can even eat it as a salad.
Yes, watermelon salsa is a thing. Oh, yes it is.
And so is bacon corn salsa, with crispy bacon, corn, green onions, peppers and more.
What about cranberry salsa, which swaps out the tomato for cranberries?
There’s also such a thing as cabbage salsa, which is basically your standard salsa recipe, plus cabbage for extra crunch and wonderful flavor.
Rainbow Salsa is another chunky recipe. This one calls for black beans as well as tomatoes, peppers, cilantro, etc.
This Crisp Cucumber Salsa is mainly cucumbers, with just enough sour cream to give the creamy base.
If you like smoky and sweet, this Chipotle Peach Salsa has been missing from your life.
Looking for something in between a roasted red salsa and a black bean and corn salsa? Try this recipe for roasted tomato, black bean and corn salsa.
Slow cooker salsa is a nice alternative when you don’t want to do any of roasting or grilling.
Sweet cilantro salsa is actually cilantro based, making it a very unique take on salsa recipes.
Imagine a chunky salsa with avocado and feta cheese, and you’ve got avocado feta salsa.
This recipe for pineapple mango salsa includes peppers and diced tomatoes.
This fresh mango salsa recipe is sweet and spicy, and very easy to make.
Tomato mango salsa is different from the last two, which didn’t include tomato and were sweeter overall.
If you can’t get mangoes, a mild peach tomato salsa can also do the trick.
Mexican street corn is delicious, but kind of hard to eat on the cob. So here’s a version of Mexican street corn in salsa form.
Love the salsa they make at Chili’s? Check out this copycat recipe for Chili’s salsa.
And you can also make Chipotle’s corn salsa at home.
Or Chipotle’s Medium Salsa, with Tobasco, cilantro, and cumin.
Or Chipotle’s Hot Salsa, which is not just their medium salsa with extra spice. You make it with arbol and ancho peppers instead of jalapeño.
Somebody took Chipotle’s corn salsa and bumped it up to avocado corn salsa.
This recipe for pear pomegranate salsa combines the fruit with several of the traditional salsa ingredients.
Apple may not be the first ingredient you think of with salsa, but this apple salsa recipe might change your mind.