Slow-Cooked Salsa

Late July and the tomatoes are fully in production now. More than I can eat fresh, which is when the real work begins: sauce, roasting, drying. I made a big batch of roasted tomatoes this week — halved, olive oil, long oven — and froze six containers. The slow roasting concentrates the flavor into something almost jammy, intensely tomato, excellent in sauces and braises through the fall and winter.

The cucumbers have reached that stage where they need pickling or you'll drown in them. Made two batches of dill pickles: the straightforward brine pickles that will be ready in three weeks, and a batch of bread-and-butter pickles from a recipe I found in Helen's book that I'd never tried. The bread-and-butter version is sweeter, more complex, better on sandwiches than the dill. I suspect I'll be making both from now on.

Bill called from Maine with news: he's going to make tomato sauce for the first time. He planted a kitchen garden this spring and his tomatoes are also coming in. He described the plants with the excited wonder of someone who has seen a plant produce fruit for the first time as a gardener rather than a shopper. The translation from abstraction to actuality — from "tomatoes in a store" to "tomatoes in my garden" — is one of those things that you can't really prepare someone for. You have to see it happen in real time.

I walked him through the sauce process over the phone. He called back two days later to say it worked. That was all he said. It worked. Good enough.

After walking Bill through his first tomato sauce and freezing six containers of roasted tomatoes myself, I kept coming back to one more use for the overflow: salsa. Slow-cooked salsa lets the tomatoes do the same thing they do in the oven — lose water, concentrate, deepen — but entirely hands-off in the slow cooker, which suits a week when you’re already managing multiple batches of pickles on the counter. It’s the kind of recipe I’d recommend to Bill next, once the sauce triumph has settled in.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 3 hr 30 min | Total Time: 3 hr 50 min | Servings: 40 (about 5 cups)

Ingredients

14 plum tomatoes, cored and cut into large chunks
2 medium onions, roughly chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and finely chopped
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
3 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

Combine in slow cooker. Add tomatoes, onions, garlic, and jalapenos to a 3- or 4-quart slow cooker. Stir in tomato paste, olive oil, lime juice, salt, cumin, and black pepper until everything is evenly coated.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on high for 3 to 3 1/2 hours, until the tomatoes have broken down completely and the mixture has thickened and darkened in color.
Blend to desired texture. Use an immersion blender to pulse the salsa to your preferred consistency — a few pulses for chunky, more for smooth. Alternatively, transfer carefully in batches to a countertop blender.
Finish and cool. Stir in the fresh cilantro. Taste and adjust salt, lime juice, or cumin as needed. Allow to cool to room temperature before transferring to jars or containers.
Store. Refrigerate for up to 2 weeks, or freeze in 1-cup portions for up to 3 months.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow-Cooked Salsa — What I Made the Week Bill’s Garden Came In