Last Updated on 26th July 2022 by
Pickle salsa adds a little extra crunch to traditional salsa, also giving it some additional green color for a special kind of Latino condiment.
What Is Pickle Salsa?
It combines the crunchiness and sour flavor of dill pickles (are pickles healthy?) with the fresh, slightly spicy tomato-based salsa dip. You might never have thought about combining these ingredients in your salsa, but they really pair nicely together.
This condiment is basically just your classic salsa recipe with the addition of dill pickle, and perhaps a few seasonings to help make it stand out from regular salsa. You might be wondering how all these ingredients come together to make a dish with its own unique flavor.
How does pickle salsa taste? It tastes a lot like relish with a little spiciness and some added salt. It can linger in your mouth for a while, with its potent flavors, and if you’re a fan of pickles or salsa, it may just scratch the itch for both of those.
What Is in Pickle Salsa?
You can make this with several different kinds of pickles, like garlic dills or classic dill pickles, and you could even use sweet pickles.
I think the garlic dills give it a satisfying crunch and add the most appropriate flavor for this dish, but you can use your favorite pickles and see how they work together with the rest of the classic salsa ingredients.
Petite dills are probably the easiest to work with, and there are several different varieties of these.
Besides the pickles, though, you want to choose fresh, appropriate ingredients. Red onions will add a nice mild flavor to the salsa, but you can use yellow onions if you want a stronger onion flavor. No matter what I’m adding to pickle salsa, I make sure my ingredients are fresh and high quality.
I like how red pepper works in conjunction with the dill, complementing its salty flavor with its delicate sweetness.
If you want some added heat, you can sprinkle in some red chili pepper flakes when you’re mixing up your salsa. These are really powerful and spicy, so there’s no need to add a lot of them at once.
Be careful about the dill you use. Dried dill and fresh dill for cooking are different from one another, and I would use fresh dill in this recipe and stay away from the dried dill entirely.
How to Make Pickle Salsa
One of the easiest ways to make your pickle salsa is to use a pull chop. It’s a small kitchen tool that cuts up here ingredients very quickly and simply. Just rough chop everything and throw it in, cover it with a lid, and then pull the string. It dices everything in a matter of seconds.
Let me share with you a recipe I use for making pickle salsa at home. It is pretty simple and keeps the number of ingredients limited so that you don’t have to search all over the place to find everything you need for it.
Ingredients:
- About 40 petite dill pickles
- 1 red pepper, diced
- 1/2 cup of onion, diced finely
- 2 tablespoons of fresh dill
- 1/8 teaspoon of dried red chili flakes
Directions:
- Start by dicing the pickles.
- Put all of your ingredients into a bowl and mix everything together gently.
- Let the salsa mix refrigerator for about an hour (longer is okay).
- If you want to use the garlic in the jar (if you bought garlic dills), you can dice that as well when you dice the pickles and add it into the mixture.
This homemade salsa will last for up to three days in the fridge, if you keep it covered in a refrigerator-safe container.
You could put all of your ingredients into the blender to make this salsa, which will give you a runnier, more liquid dish. Not using the blender yields a condiment that’s closer to pico de gallo.
It’s up to you how you want your salsa to turn out and whether you prefer your dry or wet. If you are using the salsa as a chip dip, it may benefit you to make it runny and liquid, whereas a garnish might be better if it were dry and chunky.
It’s okay to use the blender, but be careful about pureeing it to much and losing the chunkiness and crunchiness that a good salsa typically has.
How to Eat Pickle Salsa
Pickle salsa can be used a few different ways. I think most people think of combining salsa with corn chips and using it s a dip, but that’s far from the only way to utilize salsa.
Would you like some ideas for what to eat with pickle salsa? One of my favorite ways to utilize it is a dip or garnish for quesadillas. You can make quesadillas at home very easily (check my recipe) and then alternate dipping the quesadilla wedges in sour cream and salsa.
The salty, briny, spiciness of the pickle salsa goes so well with the cheesy, bready quesadilla.
You can also use pickle salsa as a filling for burritos or tacos, as well as other similar dishes like empanadas. It makes for a great garnish on enchurritos along with whatever else you normally put on them.
Try using it as a garnish with fajitas as well, and you can really add it to most Latino or Spanish dishes- even Spanish rice.
I like to mix the homemade pickle salsa in white or brown rice with some vegetable stock to make a quick and easy Spanish rice.
The salsa already has a number of components that go in this dish that it is pretty easy to mix it up using what you have on hand.
The pickles really make for a distinctive rice dish, and it may not be to your liking, but I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how they subtlety change up a lot of the dishes you are familiar with.
I'm Pauline, a mother of four grown children, my passion for cooking stemmed from the joy i get cooking for my family. I love to try new dishes, especially when dining out but creating and sharing my own recipes is my favourite thing to do!
