Lemon And Lime Juice Are Essential To Copycat Chipotle Tomato Salsa

Salsa, unlike guacamole, may not be extra at Chipotle, but there are still plenty of reasons why you might want to make a copycat version. Reason No. 1: You didn't get enough salsa in your delivery order. Reason No. 2: You're making copycat Chipotle at home, such as this tasty barbcoa recipe or this one for a super-sized chicken burrito. Reason No. 3: You have a bag of chips and nothing to dip them in.

It doesn't matter why you might need some Chipotle tomato salsa stat, since recipe developer Catherine Brookes has you covered with this recipe recreation that takes just 10 minutes to make and requires only seven ingredients. Okay, seven may be on the high side for a simple salsa cruda such as this one, but in addition to the typical tomatoes, onion, cilantro, jalapeños, and salt, Brookes insists that you also need two types of citrus juice. Why both lemon and lime? Well, she feels that both of these are needed in order to better replicate the taste of Chipotle's original and make the salsa nice and zingy. Besides, as any pirate will tell you, double the citrus means twice the protection from scurvy, aarrhh!

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You Should Try To Use The Whole Batch Up In A Few Days

While this salsa is fresh and tasty when it's first made, it's not the kind of thing that's going to last indefinitely, unlike the salsa in packets that you might take home from Taco Bell (assuming you're not a Chipotle loyalist). Brookes suggests that her sauce needs to be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator to be at its best, but even then, she says it'll last just four days at the very most. While in many cases the workaround would be to freeze the leftovers, she doesn't recommend doing so as she feels that this might adversely affect the texture of the tomatoes and other ingredients.

Of course, you could always try freezing this salsa anyway and then puree it after it thaws to make a smoother, thinner, but still tasty sauce. If the salsa's flavors seem a bit muted after its time in the freezer, you can always add more lemon and lime juice to bring back the zip and zing. If you'd rather not risk it, though, you can always just cut the recipe down to make a smaller amount of salsa if you won't need a whole pound of tomatoes' worth to dunk your chips.

Read the original article on Mashed.