Mexican Salsa Verde Recipe Without Tomatillos

[Athina Dollison]

Thisrecipe for salsa verde is my version of an authentic Mexican salsa recipe! The main ingredients for a salsa verde are tomatillos and serrano peppers. But, there are many variations and techniques to make a salsa verde. Here's how to make it!

This Mexican green sauce is ideal for tacos, but it has many uses like for making enchiladas verdes, chicken chilaquiles verdes, pork in salsa verde, and chicken tamales in green sauce, just to mention a few.

When I have company over, I love to make a batch of this salsa with some of my fresh salsa roja and serve it alongside some fresh crispy tortilla chips. All of my guests tend to want to take some of these chips and salsa home with them because they love it so much!

I also like to use this green tomatillo salsa in other dishes like scooped on top of some tacos (like these beef tongue barbacoa tacos) or enchiladas (like these enchiladas rojas but swapping out the red sauce for this Mexican green sauce).

There is one other green Salsa that looks like the avocado salsa that is little known. It involves using green mexican zucchini (actually all zucchini are mexican) instead of tomatillos in the recipe here.

I just made a salsa verde fresca/crudo, about 10 minutes ago. Tomatillo, jalapeno, poblano, habanero, black pepper, lime juice, and of course the onion and garlic, and cilantro. I make cooked salsas but this time I wanted fresh! It's 99 degrees out! It's delicious, muy picante, and beautiful to look at. I'm making this for a small independent mechanic shop that has been in business for 30 years! They are doing work on my vehicle tomorrow. They're great people, so I thought some fresh salsa and chips would be perfect for their busy workday. The habaneros really add something to this salsa and I find black pepper also contributes. I live in the high desert of New Mexico and like using Manzano peppers when I can find them. I love their black seeds that look so "cool" in a salsa. Thanks so much!!!

I have not tried this yet, but I have everything intention of doing so once my tomatillo plants gift me with their bounty. Have you ever canned this for a shelf stable salsa? I would love to have it handy all year long. Thank you

Hello Mrs Martinez, my name is Glenn and I'm trying to find a recipe that's authentic for green chili stew I'm not sure if I should use tomatoes to make the sauce or just blend up roasted green chilies I could use a little adult supervision on this Thank You?

I was dubious. My tomatillos were a little soft definitely not fresh as can be and the recipe was so simple... But oh. my. god. This is soooooo good! I'm trying to think of all the things I can put it on... Need to make tacos or realy just get a spoon and eat this out of the container. Wow! Thanks for the recipe.

I've made this before but making it for my daughter's wedding for 75-100 people! Along with rice, guacamole, and salsa verse! She only wanted me to cook those things because my husband is Mexican and I lived in Mexico! No pressure and you've always been a big help to me! I love to cook and youre the best!

Hello Jos, I moved from Texas to Tokyo, Japan and four years later back to Texas. I love and cook both Japanese and San Antonio TexMex dishes. I am thrilled to find this wonderful, authentic Mexican food site by a woman who is also familiar with TexMex and our beloved breakfast tacos. I made Huevito en Salsa with homemade corn tortillas this morning. I will use the recipes from this site a lot. They are what I know from Mexico (where I have traveled) and Texas. Thank you Mely!!!

Gracias por la receta.it reminds me of the sala Verde my mom would make back in Texas. It was hard finding fresh tomatillos and Chile serrano in Tokyo, Japan but my Japanese wife and I were able to find them at a Farmers' market. This will go great with the enchiladas de Pollo that I will make for her.

Dear Mely.

My brother went to the States and his wife is american. This web site is a great and excellent way of for her, to be able to learn how to cook mexican recipes for my brother. Thank you so much

Mely,

This is very similar to the recipe that I use, but the one I use has you do a last step of heating oil in a sauce pan and cooking the sauce for a bit to thicken it. Have you ever done it this way?

Also, I sometimes will roast the tomatillos and peppers instead of boiling them which gives it a little deeper taste.

Thanks,

Joy

Yes, something I do that, we call it fried salsa. Actually, my mom does that to all her salsas. The salsas cooked that way last a couple of day longer on the fridge. I just prefer to avoid the oil. ?

Mely so glad I found you. When ever I go looking for a recipe I get Food network, yummly and others. I wanted authentic recipes from a Mexican kitchen!!! So many things to try, I will have fun experimenting with everything.

thanks

Hi

Love your recipes.I've been wanting to learn more about real Mexican cooking & think your site/blog is fab!!!

Would love to try making the Salsa Verde but not so keen on the idea of using canned as I like to use fresh produce.I am in the UK so fresh tomatillos are sadly not an option. I read somewhere that the tart flavour of rhubarb is quite similar to tomatillos & can be used as a substitute. Wonder if you'd ever heard of it or if you can think of another possible substitute available in the UK. Mexican Salsa Verde doesn't seem to feature in any of the Mexican Restaurants I've visited & it sounds a lovely sauce to have with Pork.

Canned tomatillos are not that bad, give them a try. But if you really don't want to use them, there is a green salsa cooked in some places of Mexico that uses green squash instead of the tomatillo, it renders a creamy salsa. Cook the squash with the rest of the ingredients for the salsa. I hope to get a chance to publish hat trecipe pretty soon.

I have a bumper crop this year and have been so busy couldn't keep up and now they are falling off and are more yellow than green....are these OK to use? I want to use 1/3 yellow to 2/3 green, what do you? think?

I tried once to grow tomatillos in my small balcony, the result very small tomatoes, maybe the lack of sunlight had something to do about it.

And that was my only experience growing tomatillos, so I'm not a good resource to give advise on them. ? Sorry about your tomatoes turning yellow.

actually when you make the salsa sautee 1/4 of a chop onion with 1 tablespoon of oil and then add the salsa and cook for 3 minutes and remove immediately let it cool and enjoy it! This is the perfect combination!

Hi, I'm Mely Martinez, a former Mexican school teacher, home cook, and food blogger. I moved to the United States about ten years ago, after living in Mexico my whole life. Now I love to share home-style recipes for authentic Mexican food.

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In my area (San Diego County), the chiles pictured are usually called geros or geritos, not yellow jalapeos (though chile nomenclature certainly varies from region to region). They are often used to make chiles toreados.

my ninja came with 2 blender cups and the large pitcher, so you can just blend enough for a smoothie, or salsa like she used in the picture. Shop around. target.com or amazon.com has a variety of blenders.

Wow! I have tried so many verde sauce recipes and none of them were anywhere near as good as this is! However, I could not find yellow jalapeno so used 2 anaheims plus the serrano. Otherwise I followed your recipe exactly and I just love it. Next time I will double it as we gobbled it all up. Thank you.

I think it will taste just fine with green jalapeos. I feel like the yellow peppers are less spicy (in my opinion at least), so maybe with green chiles the salsa might be a little more on the spicier side. Either way, I hope this recipe helps you get as close to your favorite version of salsa verde as possible. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment!

Lol, yeah, they are pretty potent when cooking them on the stove! Roasting them in the oven should also work. As a matter of fact, I think I will test that method out and update the recipe with roasting as another option. Thank you so much for your feedback, Laura!

Love it! I made this for dinner tonight as my mom is allergic to tomatoes and lemons (I added lemon later after I divided portions), and it was perfect. The instructions were easy to follow and appreciate the simple ingredient list. I will definitely make again.

Bright. Gorgeous. Aggressive. And I'm not talking about the food blogger who made this sauce in her kitchen yesterday *ahem*. Salsa Verde was meant to accompany a simple roast chicken, but I couldn't help myself from taking increasingly bigger "tastes" of the stuff with a spoon right from the food processor before we even sat down for dinner. What little we had leftover transformed a bowl of plain quinoa into an amazing side dish the next night. With a few spoonfuls of water and lemon juice, Salsa Verde becomes a vinaigrette for salads and vegetables.

Salsa verde could be that Mexican "green salsa" you have with tortilla chips, or it could be an Italian herb-based sauce like this recipe. "Salsa verde" literally translates from both Spanish and Italian to "green sauce" in English.

While Mexican salsa verde is usually made with a base of chopped or pureed tomatillos, cilantro, and hot chili peppers, the Italian salsa verde is a fresh sauce made of finely chopped herbs, the majority of which is parsley.

Italian Salsa Verde also has fresh garlic, capers, and sometimes anchovies for that added umami. It can range in consistency and texture between finer pesto and rougher chimichurri, depending on what tools you use to make it. A mortar and pestle will render a smoother Salsa Verde; a knife and cutting board with make it a little more rustic.

Yes, it does! Italian Salsa Verde has many of the same ingredients as Chimichurri, the sauce famously associated with Argentina. They both comprise a base of chopped parsley, garlic, and olive oil. However, Italian Salsa Verde may have any number of other green herbs, like mine with basil, while chimichurri adds only fresh oregano. In addition, the acid component is lemon juice in Italian Salsa Verde whereas it is red wine vinegar in chimichurri. Italian Salsa Verde has added flavor from capers and anchovies for umami whereas chimichurri has red pepper flakes for heat.

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