What is Salsa Criolla?
Salsa Criolla is a fresh, raw relish made from thinly sliced red onions as the primary ingredient along with tomato, chili pepper, cilantro, garlic, and lime juice. It is used as a topping and side for savory Latin dishes. The flavors are bright, sour, and salty with heat from the chili peppers. Salsa criolla has a crunchy and juicy texture.
What does Salsa Criolla Taste Like?
Salty is one of the five main tastes. It has a satisfying and addictive quality with hints of sourness. Salty foods include cheeses, cured meats, chips, and olives. It is used in almost every dish and prepared food. Salt is added to enhance flavor and offer a distinctly salty taste.
Sour is one of the five main tastes. It is tart and bright, sometimes with a mouth-puckering quality. Sour is a naturally occurring flavor found in many foods, including citrus, vinegar, various dairy products, and certain fruits. Sour is used to enhance a dish or drink and is used as both a main and complimentary flavor.
Spicy is a flavor that brings heat and fire to food by creating a burning sensation in the mouth or sinuses. Spicy flavors come from hot peppers, horseradish, and wasabi. Spicy adds a kick and sometimes complexity to a dish and releases endorphins, creating a mildly addictive quality.
Ingredients
The plum tomato is type of tomato with a small body and oblong shape that is somewhat bigger than the roma tomato. This tomato is less juicy than the round slicing variety, which makes it good in salads, but is mainly used for tomato sauce. It is red with a thin skin and a soft yet slightly firm flesh and seeds in its center. It has a mild acidity and tart sweetness.
The red onion is a type of onion and a bulb vegetable, meaning its bulb and not its leaves are eaten. Onions come in many varieties, including white, yellow and red. The onion is usually round and has a thin dry skin around its juicy layers. The skin is a purple/red tone as is the flesh. The body of the onion is made of multiple round layers, that get smaller towards the center. The flavor of onions are sharp and sweet when raw, with an astringent taste. When cooked, these flavors mellow and the sweetness emerges. Onion are a very common flavoring and ingredient for many savory dishes.
Lime juice comes from the citrus fruit of the lime tree. Limes are round and roughly the size of a small plum, but can vary. Limes have a firm texture with green rind. The pale green flesh of the lime is firm, pulpy and juicy, much like a lemon, but harder. The juice is squeezed from the flesh and is a pale green color with a sour and refreshing taste and is used in drinks and food items, including sauces.
Yellow chili peppers are a variety of hot pepper with a thin, shiny, yellow skin and a tapered body of 2-3 inches in length. Their flesh is thin and crunchy with extremely spicy seeds inside the hollow of the pepper. The flavor is bright and hot. The pepper is often cooked to reduce the heat and is added into savory dishes in small quantities. This pepper is popular in Central and South American food as well as some middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines.
Cilantro is a leafy herb with a thin green stalk and small, partially fringed green leaves that look similar to a three leaf clover. It has a distinct smell that is similar to a lime and a flavor to match that. In addition, it smells and tastes the same and has a strong flavor with a hint of greens. Due to a genetic trait, some people find that cilantro tastes like soap. This herb is used in many cuisines, particularly from Asia and Central and South America.
Garlic is used in cuisines around the world and is extremely popular for its depth of flavor. The garlic bulb forms underneath the soil and is harvested once it reaches maturity. The bulb typically has thin, dry, white and flaky skin, surrounding the individual cloves. Often there are 10-12 cloves to a bulb/head of garlic. The cloves are cream colored with a strong smell and flavor that is spicy and sharp. Garlic takes on a nutty flavor in addition, when cooked. It is used in countless dishes, sauces, breads and more.
Salt is a mineral composed mostly of sodium chloride. It is the main flavoring used in food and is naturally occurring in certain foods, such as cheese, beets, meat and celery, plus many others. Salt is white and has finer granules than sugar. Many commercial salts include iodide, while others exclude it. Most salts are white, while some are naturally pale pink with minerals. Salt brings out the flavor of something and can create a tangy mouthfeel, if used in excess.
