Salsa Verde

Salsa verde is a popular Mexican green salsa made with tomatillos, serrano peppers, white onion, garlic, cilantro, salt, and lime juice.

While you can totally get salsa verde in a jar, you’ll be surprised by how easy it is to make at home — you’ll never have to buy jarred salsa verde again!

You can use this at a dip with chips, or you can use it to make enchiladas, quesadillas, or even my Salsa Verde Chicken.

Salsa Verde Ingredients

Here’s what you’ll need to make this salsa:

Tomatillos: Also known as “husk tomatoes”, these look like green tomatoes and help give this salsa its signature green color.

White onion: Cut into big chunks.

Garlic: Whole garlic cloves.

Serrano peppers: You can sub in jalapeños.

Cilantro: For flavor.

Lime juice: For acid.

Kosher salt: To bring it all together.

How to Make Salsa Verde

This recipe is so simple! Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Prep you ingredients.

Turn your broiler on HIGH (or if you don’t have one, turn the oven on to 425 degrees F).

Peel the husks (it looks like green wrapping) from the tomatillos and rinse them well under water. The husks can leave a sticky residue on the tomatillos, so you want to get that off.

Also get your garlic ready (keeping the peels on), and chop the onions.

Place the tomatillos, garlic, onion, and serrano peppers on a lined baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Make sure everything is coated.

Step 2: Char your veggies.

If broiling, make sure the rack is about 4 inches from the flame. Broil for 5 minutes, then give everything a flip, and broil about 5-6 minutes, or until everything is charred. (Make sure to watch the garlic as it can burn easily. Remove if necessary so that it doesn’t burn).

If roasting in the oven, roast for about 20-30 minutes, flipping halfway through. Check on these, though, as some ovens take a bit longer and others shorter. You’ll get a good idea after you first batch how to time it for next time!

Step 3: Deseed the peppers

Once removed, allow to cool for a few minutes, then take the stems off of the serranos and deseed. (I wear gloves for this because if I don’t, I will absolutely touch my eye and cause chaos.)

You can also pop the garlic out of the cloves at this step, cutting off the woody ends.

Step 4: Place everything in a blender and blend!

Now add the tomatillos, onion, garlic, serranos (I roast 2 but I start blending with 1 and add more if needed.), lime juice, cilantro, and salt.

Now blend everything on high until smooth, scraping down the sides occasionally to make sure you aren’t missing anything. Taste and add anything extra you think is missing (like more serrano, salt, or lime juice).