Grilled Veggie Salsa

Grilled Veggie Salsa-NeenieMakes.com

Our summers here are generally so cool that we don’t miss air conditioning all that much. We practice passive cooling to the extent we can in a house that has no specific passive heating or cooling features designed in to it. One thing we do is to cook out on the grill as much as possible in warm weather rather than firing up the stove and adding heat to the house. Consequently we are always experimenting with recipes on the grill.

At first our experiments were with various meats and veggies. This summer we added grill mats and a grill sized cookie sheet with sides about an inch high to cook things that might otherwise fall through the grill grate. One of our first experiments was to grill all the veggies for making salsa.

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Usually we make fresh salsa, but I had tried a broiled veggie salsa and charring the veggies a little did add a nice flavor to the salsa. However, it was in July before our monsoon season got started, and having the oven on broil threw too much heat into the house. We decided to try cooking the veggies on the grill to keep the heat outside.

We loved the results! My husband said it was the only salsa we would ever need, and we’ve tried many different versions, so we’ve been eating it ever since on just about everything. We grill outside almost year round, so I am sure this winter we will be grilling tomatoes and peppers every couple of weeks.

Here are a few notes regarding the veggies we use for salsa. A lot of it is personal preference, so you may want to experiment a little to see what tastes best to you.

1. We have tried different varieties of tomatoes for both fresh and cooked salsa and we have found we like the Roma the best for cooked salsas. Romas are paste tomatoes and have a thicker fruit wall and fewer seeds and less juice than other varieties, so the salsa made from it comes out thicker, which we like.
2. We like to use sweet yellow onions. We particularly like Vidalia’s when we can get them. They have a good, sweet flavor and not a lot of heat. But any onion should work.
3. We have tried both Jalapeños and Serrano peppers for salsa and like them both. In our experience, Serranos are always a little hotter than Jalapeños, so it just depends on how spicy you like your salsa. If you like it really hot, then by all means try a hotter pepper, but we stop at Serranos. I seed them by cutting them in half lengthwise and scraping out the seeds and membranes with a knife or grapefruit spoon. You should wear gloves for this if you are concerned about getting burned by the juice of the peppers. It is hard to wash off and can make you miserable fast if you forget and touch your eyes.
4. Our grill is a Char-Broil propane grill with infrared plates and a thermostat. We live in an area that is high risk for forest fires so most of the time grilling with wood or charcoal is banned. We set the temperature to about 400 degrees for this recipe but a medium heat will do if yours is not thermostatically controlled. Cooking times will vary due to the differences in grills, so watch it carefully!
5. I cover a cookie sheet with heavy duty foil, lightly oiled, for cooking the veggies. It has sides about 1” high to prevent juice from dripping into the fire and to save all the juices for the salsa. We cook in two shifts-onions, peppers and garlic in the first round then tomatoes in the second. Just make sure the cookie sheet fits your grill and you can close the lid before you get it loaded with veggies (voice of experience). There are other kinds of tools for grilling that might work just as well but we like to save all the juice that cooks out of the veggies and I had the cookie sheet on hand.

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Grilled Veggie Salsa