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Restaurant-Style Blender Salsa

Averie Sunshine

4.56 from 102 votes

Updated: Oct 31, 2024

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🍅🎉💃🏼 My Quick & Easy Blender Salsa recipe is FAST, EASY, and will teach you how to make salsa at home in just a few minutes in the blender, so you’ll never run out! It tastes just like that addictively amazing salsa that your favorite Mexican restaurant serves alongside a basket of warm tortilla chips. Get ready to DIG IN and impress your friends and family with this restaurant-style blender salsa recipe!

I’m a chips and salsa fiend. I almost don’t even need the chips and can just shovel in the salsa by the forkful. When I want salsa now, I turn to this restaurant-style salsa recipe made in a blender.

The best part of this salsa is how fast, easy, and goofproof it is. Add all the ingredients to your blender or food processor, blend, and you’re done in under 2 minutes. My favorite kind of recipe!

Over time, the flavors really marry, and the rawness of the onion and garlic mellows.

We love this easy salsa recipe so much more than any restaurant or store-bought salsa. I love it when homemade, easy recipes trump all the others.

This is just perfect and so easy. It’s my go to summer party salsa. Who knew it was simple to make your own salsa!

Kate

Homemade Blender Salsa Ingredients

I prefer making my blended salsa with canned tomatoes rather than fresh. Using canned tomatoes keeps this a dump-and-blend recipe and eliminates the need to dirty a knife and cutting board.

Gather the following ingredients to make the salsa in a blender:

• Canned tomatoes – I used canned whole tomatoes, but you can use diced if that’s all you have on hand. Just make sure to buy a large enough can, and double check that your tomatoes don’t contain extra flavorings (sometimes they’re canned with basil or other herbs). It probably would be fine to use fresh tomatoes instead of canned. It will result in a slightly different flavor, perhaps, but if you have them to use up, I would go for it
• Yellow onions 
• Jalapeño pepper
• Fresh garlic
• Ground cumin
• Salt 
• Granulated sugar – You can omit the sugar, but try making a batch with a little sugar in it and see what you think! The sugar balances the heat from the pepper and the acidity in the tomatoes. Start with less and add more if necessary, and definitely be careful not to over-sweeten
• Fresh cilantro
• Fresh lime juice

Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.

How to Make Salsa in a Blender

This blender salsa recipe is customizable and requires you to stop, taste-test, and tweak based on your own personal preferences. Everyone’s preference for salt, heat, and texture differs.

Here’s an overview of how blender salsa is made:

1. Add all the ingredients to a blender.
2. Pulse until the salsa reaches your desired consistency.
3. Adjust the seasonings to taste.
4. If desired, stir in optional black beans or corn to the blended salsa to add extra flavor and texture (stir in by hand, don’t pulse in the blender). 
5. Transfer the salsa to an airtight container or jar, or serve right away!

What to Serve with Restaurant-Style Salsa

Tacos Al Pastor

Beef Taco Salad Bowls

Sweet Potato, Corn, and Black Bean Enchiladas

Black Bean Burrito Bowl Salad

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4.56 from 102 votes

Blender Salsa

By Averie Sunshine

🍅🎉💃🏼 This FAST and EASY salsa recipe will teach you how to make salsa at home in just a few minutes in the blender so you'll never run out! It tastes just like that addictively amazing salsa that your favorite Mexican restaurant serves alongside a basket of warm tortilla chips. Get ready to DIG IN and impress your friends and family with this restaurant style blender salsa!

Prep Time: 2 minutes minutes

Total Time: 2 minutes minutes

Servings: 20 servings

Video

Equipment

• 1 Blender or Food Processor

Ingredients 

• ▢ 28 ounces canned tomatoes, including juice (I used these whole, peeled plum tomatoes)
• ▢ 1 small yellow onion, peeled and roughly chopped
• ▢ 1 or 2 jalapeno peppers, de-stemmed and roughly chopped*
• ▢ 3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
• ▢ 1 ½ teaspoons ground cumin, or to taste
• ▢ 1 ½ teaspoons salt, or to taste (remember some brands of tomatoes and chips are much saltier than others)
• ▢ ¼ to 1 teaspoon granulated sugar, optional and to taste**
• ▢ 1 tbsp or 2 handfuls cilantro leaves, discard stems (I prefer 2, or about half of a 1 small bunch)
• ▢ 3 tbsp lime juice
• ▢ 3/4 cup corn, optional
• ▢ 3/4 cup canned black beans, drained and rinsed, optional
• ▢ corn tortilla chips, for serving

Instructions 

• Add all ingredients (except optional corn and beans) to the canister of a blender or food processor in the order listed. Pulse or blend on high power until texture is as smooth as desired. If you have a very strong blender, you probably don’t need to pre-chop the ingredients before adding them to the blender, but I do just to make sure I don’t get large random, accidentally unblended chunks of any one ingredient.
• Taste the salsa and based on personal preference tweak as necessary.
• Optionally stir in the corn and black beans.
• Transfer to airtight container and serve immediately with chips. However, I prefer to refrigerate salsa for 1 day prior to serving because I prefer chilled salsa and because the flavors marry, mellow, and the flavor improves on the second and third day. Salsa will likely keep up to 1 week airtight in the fridge; however, we’ve always eaten a batch within 3 days.

Notes

*I prefer 2 peppers; remove seeds to greatly reduce heat level.

**The sugar balances the heat and tomato acidity; start with less and add more if necessary; careful not to over-sweeten.

Nutrition

Serving: 1serving, Calories: 17cal, Carbohydrates: 4g, Protein: 1g, Fat: 0.2g, Saturated Fat: 0.02g, Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.1g, Monounsaturated Fat: 0.04g, Sodium: 227mg, Potassium: 133mg, Fiber: 1g, Sugar: 2g, Vitamin A: 97IU, Vitamin C: 6mg, Calcium: 17mg, Iron: 1mg

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

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