Spicy Arbol Crema

This salsa hits a lot of notes: Spicy, Creamy, and Savory with a touch of acidity. The dairy in it helps to temper the spice a little but there is still a very strong pepper flavor. The tomato acid amps up the spice sensation on the tongue.

This condiment is fantastic as a taco topper with shredded cabbage, and also super great as a taco salad dressing.

It complements any sort of mild taco filling. Our favorites are fish tacos, veggies or carnitas with loads of shredded savoy cabbage on top and a nicely toasted corn tortilla. We also serve it regularly with our Grilled Pollo Asado. Try it with a scrambled egg breakfast taco too!

Garlic cloves are optional – they will add more spice (horseradish-type spice, not pepper spice). They also will add a nutrient and digestive boost to the salsa.

Regarding the char-roasted peppers: We get ours at our summer Farmer’s Market. There’s always a pepper vendor there who is char-roasting them in a round drum. You can buy an entire big bag of them straight out of the roaster for super cheap. I take them home, let them cool, remove about half the charred skin on them, and package them individually, 2 peppers per ziplock. We then freeze and use throughout the winter in many different recipes.

You’ll still need to remove the tops and seeds when you dethaw and use them. You can do so when frozen – frozen peppers are far easier to work with.

Don’t worry about getting every last seed of either the roasted or dried chili peppers – a food scientist recently informed me that contrary to myth, the seeds are actually not the spicy part of the pepper (that would be the inner white pith or rib part – so DO cut that out if you’d like a less-spicy sauce).

If you don’t want to waste the rest of your can of tomatoes, I would double the remainder of the ingredients and blend in a larger (full sized) blender. I tried this recipe originally with a full 14 oz can of tomatoes and found it too watery, so I reduced it to 1 cup. That ends up being about 2/3 of the can of tomatoes, so doubling the remainder of the ingredients will give you a slightly thicker salsa.

The original recipe makes about 1 1/2 cups of salsa, enough for a dinner party of 8 or to nosh on yourself all week! (Serving size based on 2T).

Enjoy!

Spicy Arbol Crema Salsa