This recipe, however, is nothing more than a jumping-off point. From there, you can play with techniques and try as many different combinations of fruits and vegetables, chiles and herbs as you can possibly dream up. For starters, you can vary the flavor of your salsa depending on what you do to your basic ingredients. Leaving everything raw will result in a salsa with a bright, refreshing taste. If you cook the salsa, you'll trade in the fresh taste for a deeper, sweeter one.
Many people hesitate to make salsa because it involves lots of time-consuming chopping.
A little chopping is unavoidable, but if you've got a food processor, it's about to become your new best friend. Tomatoes, which make up the bulk of most salsas, consequently take the most time to chop, but if you've got a food processor, it's as easy as pressing a button - well, almost. You'll still need to core the tomatoes, cut them into quarters, and scoop out the seeds, but it's still faster than dicing. Toss all the pieces in the food processor and pulse it just until the tomatoes are the consistency you want. We especially recommend dicing the onion by hand - the food processor tends to pulverize too many cells in the onion, releasing so much juice that he onion flavor becomes overpowering.