Amidst all the chaos of the past weekend, we found a little bit of time to try something out that we have been talking about for a while. I can still remember sitting at The Blue Tractor (now closed) in Traverse City, MI with @mrsbozz when we tried their smoked salsa. It was pretty amazing I will admit, but my wife went absolutely crazy for it. Unfortunately, we never made it back to the brewery and smokehouse before they shut down, and we kind of forgot about it.
Then, a year or two later, we were hanging out somewhere else and they happened to have a three salsa flight. We ordered our three salsa's with one of them being a smoked salsa, and we were once again reminded of just how amazing it was.
Of course, we soon forgot about it again, and moved on with our lives.
Finally, just a couple weeks ago, I saw a post on one of the Facebook grilling and smoking communities that I am part of. It was a guy who basically laid out his recipe for smoking vegetables to turn into salsa. So I took a screenshot of it and I proceeded to share it with my wife. She bought the stuff we needed when she was placing our weekly grocery order, and this past weekend, I gave it a go.
As you can see, she sliced up the roma tomatoes, onions, garlic, peppers, and jalapenos before placing them in smaller aluminum trays and drizzling some olive oil and seasoning on them. She also cut some holes in the bottom of the trays to help the air flow better around them. Meanwhile, I was in the backyard getting the Weber Kettle set up for the smoking process.
I didn't use a ton of charcoal because the veggies only needed to smoke for about an hour. I used some apple wood because it is relatively mild and I felt like it would compliment the vegetables better.
Just about an hour later, I pulled everything from the grill and we had our end product. As you can see, there is a nice light char on the onions and tomatoes.
We threw everything into the blender and also put in some fresh cilantro and some lime juice to brighten things up a bit. After a good thorough blending, we finally had the finished product. We eagerly pulled some tortilla chips out of the bag to give it a try.
Only to be completely disappointed. The smoke flavor was just too overpowering. That's the only flavor you really got out of it. I'm sure it was something I did wrong, but I am not quite sure what yet. I have been thinking about it and I don't honestly know where I might have went wrong.
It's possible I let it go too long, or maybe I let it get too hot. There is also the possibility I didn't let the coals get charred enough before I closed the lid. In the future I will likely wait a little longer before I put the vegetables on the grate.
It's too bad, because we were really looking forward to it, and before we blended it all up it was looking really good.
We ended up pouring most of it down the drain. The good news is the stuff to make it didn't cost that much, and pretty soon the farmers markets will be in full swing, so we will likely be able to get the veggies even cheaper to give it another go.
I really wish it had turned out differently, but it was a learning experience for me, and really just par for the course after how the rest of the weekend went!
My Sports Account - @bozz.sports
Come hang out in The Pub
