On The Salsafront

I fermented something you may have never realized could be fermented, and named it after a movie you've probably never seen.  Meet On The Salsafront!

That's what Marlon Brando would look like as a tomato.

Every year at work we have a Salsa Contest where you can enter a salsa into a blind tasting to be judged by the rest of the employees to determine who's best in 3 different categories; Hottest, Most Unique, and Overall Best. And, apart from one year when I won Most Unique in a basically uncontested category (still counts!), I usually get reminded each time that my homemade salsa is mediocre at best. So this year, to give me an extra edge in the contest and an excuse to try something new, I decided to enter a fermented salsa.

 After some brief research, I came to the conclusion that fermented Salsa doesn't require any special ingredients or additional anything, you just pick a salsa recipe you think will be great and then leave it to ferment. It was also a that point I realized that given my history of picking "great recipe's" for salsa contests, I might be screwed. But even mediocre homemade salsa is good salsa, so I kept marching forward.

That's actually parsley instead of cilantro in the upper right corner, a mistake I realized after I got halfway through chopping it.  My eyes may have failed me, but thankfully my sense of smell didn't.

Picking the ingredients was fairly easy.  Thanks to my garden and CSA membership, I was sitting on more than enough vegetables to make into a salsa. So I looked over what I had and went with the following ingredients:

• 3 lbs Tomatoes (all shapes, sizes, and colors)
• 4 Jalapeno peppers (2 with seeds, two without)
• 3 Yellow Hot Peppers (all with seeds)
• 1 Red Onion
• 6 Garlic Cloves (fresh, which are more potent than the dried kind you typically get at the store)
• Juice of 2 Limes
• A bunch of Cilantro (like a cup chopped)
• 2 tbsp Salt
• 1 tsp Cumin

This is what coming across a bowl of unmixed salsa in a dark alley would look like.

If you've never made a salsa before, its really just an exercise in chopping. If you can work a knife, you can make a salsa. I even left the skin on all the tomatoes to keep it easy. I've taken it off before, but that's a pain, and I never thought it made a difference in the taste, so I don't go through that effort anymore.

Salsa: 2 days fermented and with better lighting!

Once done chopping everything up I mixed it in the crock, covered it with a plate with a weight on top to submerge the vegetables under the vegetable liquid, covered the crock with a pillow case tied tight with a string, and left it to ferment at room temperature for 2 days.

I set some aside in a bowl for my wife and I to eat after 2 days of fermenting, which she decided to eat all herself while I jarred the rest.  That's a serving size for one apparently.

After 2 days at room temperature in the crock, I moved the salsa from the crock into a jar to finish fermenting in the fridge for the remaining 6 days before the contest.

I also got an interesting bonus at this point, which was 16 oz of fermented liquid from the salsa. It may sound like an odd bonus, but its an incredibly flavorful liquid that you can use to cook rice in, make sauces, or anywhere else you would use a broth or water. So if you ever try this at home, keep the liquid!

Ready for the big dance.

The day of the contest I took the jar out of the fridge, put it in my car, and learned quickly that salsa is the most active ferment I've ever made.  Once I started driving the jar of salsa started hissing from behind my seat, which made for the most nerve-racking 15 minute drive to work I've ever had.  All I could imagine was the top blowing off the jar and fermented salsa exploding all over the inside of my car and on me. So I drove in a panic, alternately looking forward at the road and then back to the jar behind me, like Walter White driving with the dead guys in the back of his RV in the opening episode of Breaking Bad. Thankfully it never blew, I didn't crash, and I got it into work and entered in the contest with nothing worse than an elevated heart rate.

That's fellow contestant Stephanie making a threatening pose at me. She grew up in the part of NYC where The Warriors was set.  Stylized gang fighting is the only way of life she knows.

So how did it do? Well, the name of the salsa sort of gives it away. If you've never seen On The Waterfront, its the movie where Brando's character says the famous line "I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am."  Out of the 8 salsas in the contest, it finished 3rd in most Unique, 3rd in Hottest, and 5th in the Overall category.

But in my opinion, it was no bum.  In fact I thought it was pretty awesome and would do it again.  Fermenting it gave the salsa an extra flavor, similar to a kimchi, and if your into that sort of thing then it was pretty awesome. It may not have been a contender, but it was still delicious!