Simple Honey Roasted Herb Salsa
Harvesting Small Amounts from your Garden? Buying Fresh from the Farmer’s Market? This roasted salsa recipe is for you!
This simple honey roasted salsa recipe doesn’t require copious amounts of tomatoes and peppers like many salsa canning recipes do. This is the perfect solution for using up small garden harvests, or farmer’s market hauls.
Also, this recipe does not use cilantro, so if you are team “cilantro tastes like soap” you will enjoy this one! You can certainly add cilantro, but in this recipe we prefer to leave it out.
This salsa comes together in about 30 minutes and requires very basic kitchen skills–chopping, measuring, and eating. Sounds easy, right? Right. Let’s get into it.
Can I Skip the Roasting Process?
Absolutely not. Unless you enjoy making mediocre food. Yep, I said it. We take flavor seriously around here! The roasting process is what sets this recipe apart. Roasting vegetables caramelizes the natural sugars in the vegetable bringing out buttery, rich and sweet flavors you can’t get otherwise. Just do it. And thank me later.
Can I Change the Amounts or Types of Vegetables in this Recipe?
Yes! This recipe is easily adaptable to whatever produce you have on hand. The amounts I give in the recipe are approximates. I always just go by taste instead of precise measurements. This is what makes my honey roasted salsa recipe “simple”. Scale up or down as needed. Use what you have on hand! I happen to have an abundance of jalapenos and love their flavor, so that’s what I used. Any hot pepper you enjoy would work just fine, but I would keep the scoville units (the unit used to measure how hot a pepper is) similar to that of a jalapeno so you don’t overpower the salsa. For more information on scoville ratings, click here.
Why I Use a Variety of Tomatoes
I like to use a mix of tomatoes for this salsa. By mixing red, yellow and even purple tomatoes you get a wonderful mix of acidic, sweet and smoky flavors. All of which are welcome in my salsa! However, I prefer to use more yellow tomatoes than red or purple in this particular recipe because they tend to be sweeter and less acidic. Cherry tomatoes can also be used!
Why So Many Herbs? Where is the Cilantro?
Why not? In all seriousness, I use the herbs I grow and keep on hand. I like to use fresh herbs for this recipe, if you use dried you will need to adjust amounts. Remember dried herbs are stronger than fresh, so adjust accordingly.
I don’t mind cilantro, but don’t love it either. In this recipe I have included a blend of all of my fresh summertime herbs: oregano, basil and parsley. Oh my!
How to Make My Simple Honey Roasted Salsa
Core and quarter your tomatoes. I leave the skin on mine, but that is your choice. Once roasted and blended, I don’t notice much of a difference.
Halve your onion and peppers. Peel the garlic cloves.
Toss all veggies in a nonstick pan. I prefer to use my Pampered Chef roasting pan, but any nonstick pan will work. Roast the vegetables at 400 degrees for about 20-30 minutes or until they are cooked down with crispy edges.
Once they are done, allow them to cool for a few minutes while you gather the honey, herbs, lemon juice and your food processor.
Important: Using a food processor helps maintain the right texture in your salsa. Using a blender creates foam by whipping too much air into the mixture. Not pleasant.
Next, pulse the tomatoes, onion, garlic and half the peppers into the food processor until roughly diced. Taste to see if you need to add the remaining peppers. Adjust to your liking.
Add the lemon juice, honey and herbs. Adjust flavor as needed. Enjoy!
This salsa can be stored in the fridge for 1-2 weeks, or in the freezer for long term storage. This recipe has not been tested for canning, so opt for freezer storage instead.
Click below for the Printable Recipe:
Honey Roasted Salsa
Ingredients
- 4-6 lbs of tomatoes
- 1 sweet onion
- 4-6 jalapeno peppers
- 1 small head of garlic
- 2-3 sprigs of parsley
- 2-3 sprigs of basil
- 2-3 sprigs of oregano
- 2-3 splashes of lemon juice
- 1/4 cup honey
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400.
- 1. Roughly chop your tomatoes, peppers and peeled onion. No need to dice, just chop them into big chunks. Make sure to remove the tough core of each tomato.
- 2. Peel garlic cloves.
- 3. Place tomatoes, peppers, onion, and garlic into a non-stick roasting pan. I used my Pampered Chef pan.
- 4. Roast your vegetables in the pan on 400 until lightly browned and edges become crispy. The roasting process will begin to caramelize the sugars in the vegetables providing maximum flavor. The time this takes will vary based on your oven. I usually roast mine for about 25-30 minutes.
- Let items cool for about 10 minutes while you gather your honey and herbs.
- 5. Using a food processor (NOT a blender–this will ruin the texture by creating foam) carefully ladle in hot tomatoes, onion, garlic and about half the peppers. Pulse until you reach a rough chop. Taste and determine how many more peppers you would like to add.
- 6. Once you have added the desired amount of peppers, add in the honey, lemon juice and herbs.
- 7. Taste and adjust accordingly.
- 8. Let cool and store in the fridge. Enjoy!
Notes
Inspiration:
The inspiration for this recipe came from Jessica from Roots and Refuge farm. Jessica has been such an inspiration to me when it comes to gardening and growing my own food. I never would have thought to use honey in my salsa, but man am I glad I tried it! If you prefer a cilantro salsa that is a little less spicy, be sure to check out her recipe here.
For more of my recipes, click here.
Click any image on this page to save this recipe on Pinterest!
