Use fresh tomatoes to make this easy recipe for freezer blender salsa – it’s even better than what you’ll get at Mexican restaurants! This can be made with an immersion blender or food processor too.
If you’ve been following along on Instagram, you might know that we had a backyard garden for the first time this year. I knew from the get go that we wanted lots of tomatoes.
But, I didn’t quite plan for the amount we had.
We had our garden put in in the late spring, so I knew I had to get going on planting ASAP if I wanted a garden this year. The weekend after it was ready to go, we headed to Lowe’s for our plants – mindlessly, we threw 15 (yes, 15) tomato plants in our cart. I don’t know what we were thinking!
I’m not one to waste things, so we planted all of them. Needless to say, we’ve been absolutely swimming in tomatoes lately. There are only so many tomato sandwiches that you can eat, so I’ve been trying to come up with creative ways to preserve them to enjoy all year.
Little did I know that you can actually freeze salsa! We go through at least a jar of salsa a month, so this was the perfect solution for a big batch of garden tomatoes. This recipe tastes so incredibly fresh, even after it’s been thawed. The cilantro and onion flavors added at the end really give it a pop that it needs to taste even better than the kind you find at Mexican restaurants. I love this – I could snack on it every day!
Here’s how you can make a big batch of freezer blender salsa for yourself.
- 15-20 tomatoes
- 2 bell peppers
- 1 large red onion
- 1 large white onion
- 4-5 jalapeno peppers, stems and seeds removed
- 6oz tomato paste
- 1 bunch cilantro, stems removed
- 1 cup lime juice
- 4 tbsp salt
- 1 tbsp garlic powder
- 1 tbsp pepper
- 1 red onion
- ½ bunch cilantro
- Core tops of tomatoes and cut an "x" in the bottom of the skin. Place in boiling water for 2-3 minutes - immediately remove and place in an ice bath. Allow tomatoes to cool and (easily) take off skins.
- Puree tomatoes in a blender. Pour into a large stock pot.
- Roughly chop the remaining ingredients, reserving 1 red onion and ½ bunch cilantro for the end. Place ingredients in the blender and puree. Add to tomato mixture in stock pot.
- Put stock pot over medium heat until mixture lightly boils. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 3-4 hours, until salsa has reduced by about ⅓. Stir occasionally.
- Cool salsa. Puree reserved red onion and cilantro in your blender and mix into salsa. Pour into quart-sized freezer bags (this recipe made roughly a gallon of salsa for me). Freeze for up to 6 months.
Enjoy, friends!
READY TO ORGANIZE A HOME YOU'LL LOVE?
Subscribe to the Lamberts Lately newsletter for the latest from the blog. You'll also get access to the newsletter-exclusive printable collection, full of home organization printables!
Could you do this if you used cannned 🍅?
You sure can!
I have made this 4 times now with all my tomatoes. The only change I made was to decrease the salt, but other than that, this salsa is delicious!!! Thank you so much for sharing the recipe!
So glad you’re loving it, Julene!
I did t have time to summer this all day so I used my InstaPot. It came out so yummy! My family loves it. I just finished my second batch which I doubled because I had so much produce from my garden. I even added some sweet banana peppers to this batch. Delicious! Thanks for sharing this recipe.
Sounds amazing! I love the idea of banana peppers, I bet that was a great addition.
Could you can this recipe? Like waterbath for 45 mins? 🤔
I don’t see why not! I’m not really familiar with the canning process, but I’ve had salsas that were canned before.