Recipe: Homemade Restaurant Style Salsa

Every Sunday, without fail, we would go to San Jose's after church when I was in high school. My friends and I would debate back and forth via handwritten notes during church about where we were going to go eat but we always ended up choosing San Jose's. 'Cause hey, who doesn't love Mexican food?

Every Sunday, without fail, I would eat chips & salsa and maybe a quesadilla for lunch. I'd usually eat several baskets of chips and be entirely too full for anything else. I was the cheapest San Jose's date ever - chips & salsa and water. Sometimes being a picky eater pays off!

I did love going to San Jose's every single Sunday but only because I adored chips & salsa.

Still do adore it, actually. I could eat chips & salsa every day and be completely ok with that. Bring on the restaurant style salsa with some extra spice and cilantro in it. Bonus points if everyone gets their own dish for dipping.

Why it's taken me this long to decide that I need to try and make my own homemade salsa is beyond me. But I finally bought the ingredients at the grocery store this weekend and set out to make it!

Homemade Restaurant Style Salsa
{original recipe}

Ingredients

1 28oz can tomatoes, including juice

1 small yellow onion, roughly chopped
2 jalapenos, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 & 1/2 teaspoons cumin
1 & 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
cilantro
3 tablespoons lime juice
3/4 cup corn
3/4 cup canned black beans {drained & rinsed}
chips

Directions

Add all ingredients to the blender and blend until texture is as smooth as desired.

Doesn't get much easier than that does it? Mine was a combination of blend, taste, add something, and repeat. I ended up putting in a lot of cilantro and wishing that it had a little more jalapeno {hence the red pepper flake addition}. 

I've had this blender for probably five years and I have never, ever, not once used it until I decided to make this recipe. It was way more fun to use than it should have been.

I probably won't make this every single time I want salsa because let's be honest, it's definitely cheaper just to grab a jar of salsa from the international section at the grocery store, but this stuff was awesome. I can see this becoming a staple during beach/lake weekends this summer and at tailgates in the fall.

Well, I can see it becoming a staple if I don't eat it all before it even makes it out of the blender!