Green strawberries.
Not a Photoshop’ed trick. Not a crazy new varietal. Just the young, green, unripened berries that usually fill your jam jar. They are delicious on their own – berry-ish minus the sugar (duh!) – and they remind me a lot of tomatillos. I know these may be tricky to find across the nation, but I’m sure your local farmers market vendor will be happy to bring you some. For them, it’s a shorter growing cycle and a hearty fruit that’s much easier to transport.
Sylvia from Yerena Farms has gotten some press from selling her strawberries to chefs doing all sorts of crazy things with them (and good for her, because I adore her and her family and they are extremely shrewd business people and farmers). I have yet to pickle them (but oh, I will!) but I took her suggestion and put together this little salsa – delicious! I made it pretty tangy to insure that it’s safe for water bath canning. And I was inspired by the salsa at Tacolicious and used mint instead of cilantro, but by all means you can swap that out for a more familiar salsa flavor. Chip away (ha ha!) and enjoy.
Oh, and just a word about the color. I also include some fresh berries for a little balanced sweetness. Pink food! Yeah!
Green Strawberry Salsa Recipe
Time: 25 minutes
- 1 pint (about 12 oz. by weight) of unripened strawberries; washed, hulled, and chopped to a medium dice (2 ½ cups)
- 7 oz. ripe strawberries (1 1/4 cups washed, hulled, and chopped to a medium dice)
- 4 oz. red onion (3/4 cup chopped to a medium dice)
- 3 cloves of garlic, finely minced
- 1/4 cup fresh lime juice (from about two juicy Persian limes)
- 1 ½ tsp. kosher salt
- ½ tsp. chile powder (make sure it’s just straight chile; no added oregano or anything else)
- ¼ cup plus 3 T white distilled vinegar
- 1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, tightly packed
In a medium saucepan, combine the green berries, ripe berries, onion, garlic, lime juice, salt, chile, and vinegar. Cover and bring to a boil for about 5 minutes, when it will become thick and saucy, stirring occasionally. While it’s cooking, mince the mint.
Allow the salsa cool for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently, and then stir in the mint. Your salsa is now chip-ready and it will keep, refrigerated, for about two weeks.
Makes 1 1/2 pints.
Photo credit: Pete
