The 3 Pico de Gallo Recipes Used in Mexican Restaurants (Salsa Bandera, Tomatillo & My New Favorite)
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In the middle here we have the traditional everyday pico deayo that we make at least twice a week in our house. Absolutely love that. On the left we have a tomatillo pico deayo. Super good. Most excellent. This is a tomato. This is a tomato. And in this video we're going to make three salsa frescas. First up a traditional pico deayo aka salsa bandera. And then we're also going to make a tomatio deayo. But wait there's more. I'm also going to share with y'all a third super delicious
pico recipe with a secret ingredient. This is the secret ingredient. You see, when it comes to making salsas, sometimes it takes just a few small ingredient swap to get big flavor results. So, I'll show y'all step by step how you can make these recipes perfect for your next carne asada or for the next birthday party or the next holiday. Ah, heck y'all. These are good any day of the week. I want to let me get my scale going here. This is a Quizinart uh scale. I've had it for I don't know, man, 15 years. I think it's
been a great little scale. That is exactly 1 and 1/4 lb. I'm going to cut these about a/4 inch or so. No more than 38. That seems to be a pretty common size for a lot of the things that I dice. Not really a fine dice, not really a coarse dice, somewhere in between. Now, pico deayo is one of my all-time favorite things to eat on a weekend. I can eat a whole bag of chips and a big bowl of pico deayo. It would be more than three tomatoes though. FYI, I've told this story before. Back in the day
when we used to barbecue a little bit more for the family and my family would come over on weekends. And so I would make a big old batch of pico deayo or else my grandma or my mom would make one. You know, by the time the whole family showed up, sometimes most of that pico was gone. And guess who ate it? So they started to hide it from me. Uh, so I wouldn't eat at all before everybody showed up and before all the food was done. But anyway, that's a story that I remember from way back in the day, many,
many years ago. And guys and gals, I tell y'all all the time, don't worry about being perfect. Uh, cooking is supposed to be fun. It's about enjoying what you do and enjoying the recipe that you make. Honey, I don't know about this bowl. All right, so our bowl was a little bit small, so I'm going to switch over to a bigger bowl here. We're going to be using one big green jalapeno. Now, a lot of people say when they have these little lines that the jalapeno is hotter. I have not found that to always
be true. I have found it to be a little more consistently hot, but not always 100% of the time hot. A lot of people take out the seeds and the veins. I do not. Now, if you want to take them out, you can. I personally like throwing the whole thing in there. I'll definitely dice these up a little bit finer than the tomatoes. This is less than a quarter inch, maybe an eighth of an inch or so. And I am curious if it is hotter because of those little lines. I'm going to take a bite of this here in just a minute.
Yeah, that one does have a bite. It's not extremely hot, but it definitely has a little bite. That gives me a good excuse to grab a beer. All righty. Now we've got one big green jalapeno here. These scrapers are so handy. I think they use them more for like baking and stuff or dough. But man, they sure are handy for a lot of things. Now we're going to get to the onion. Onion. Let me cut this one in half about like so. And then I will put it lengthwise like this. And that's about a third of
an onion I would call it. And one technique that a lot of cooks use to go this way, but you're supposed to do that before you do the other slices so it doesn't fall apart on you the way mine did. All right, so we're going to dice this up a little bit finer. Kind of like the jalapeno size. I like I like my onion kind of fine. Into the pico it goes. Next up, cilantro. And so I'm just going to take a little handful of cilantro here and chop it up real fine. Also, if you don't like cilantro, believe it
or not, you can leave it out and this will still be delicious as long as you have the right amount of salt and a little bit of lime. And I'm going to try to anger this lime, make it mad by squashing it. That should bring some of the juice out a little bit better. With limes, you just never know if they're going to be juicy or not. Uh, same thing with lemons, but lemons do tend to be a little bit more juicy than limes. And you notice that I did forget to weigh the onion and I forgot to weigh
the cilantro, too. But I did weigh the tomato for y'all. Oops. Okay. You can use one of those lime squeezers, but I like to get slimy hands. That's all. I like to work with my hands. Now, normally I'm going to use my OG. This is salt, pepper, and garlic in my pico deayo. I absolutely love the little black pepper kick in there, and I love the extra garlic that this brings. And this is also sea salt. This is one of my products. You can get it at arnisada.com. But today, I'm going to be
using some self thick sea salt. This is a flaked sea salt. I really like this one. I use it a lot in my cooking and for finishing up my dishes. This is not really a measurement. I'm going to say this is probably going to be about a teaspoon and a half, more or less. I'm going to go ahead and stir this all up. This is a big batch, isn't it? Now, some people like to take the seeds and the flesh out of the tomato. Some people don't like it to get juicy. They say that it's a little too soggy, but
for me personally, I like that juice. I like to drink that juice. When I get to the bottom of this bowl, I'm going to get me a couple of chips. I'm going to crunch them all up, drop them in there, and eat that juice with the chips and a spoon. I am I do that all the time. Now, normally, I'm going to let this sit in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. I want all the flavor to combine and gel together. That salt will bring out some more of the moisture from the tomato and the onion. I'm okay with
that. I like it. But today, before I put it away, because I haven't had lunch, I'm starving. I'm going to get me some chips. See, I like that juice on this. I'm going to get a little juice on here. M. Oh, yeah. I'm just going to double check. I like that juice. Cheers, my friend. That is so good. So damn good. Or am I hungry? and thirsty. I'm going to go get this into my refrigerator and I'll be right back and we're going to make a pico deayo with tomato. This is a salsa
cruda verde, which basically means a raw salsa. All the ingredients are raw. We're not cooking anything today. So, let's weigh a couple of tomatillos. I said I was going to use five. I think I'll just go with four because of the size of our bowls. So, we're going to Whoops. Would help if I turn it on, right? I think uh particularly with tomatillos, it's a good idea to weigh them because they come big, they come small, really small. Generally, it comes in batches. When you go buy them at the
store, they're either all big or almost all big or they're all small and it's hard to find the big ones. Today, we got lucky. We have some pretty nice big ones. That is exactly 14 and 1/2 oz. I'm going to get these out of the way. I'm going to use about the same amount of onion, which is about a third. Let's put a little bit more onion in there. That's 1 and 3/4 oz. Let's make it two. Let's see if we can get to 2 oz. There we go. 2 oz. Perfect. That's how
much we want to use. So, I'm going to set this aside over here. And we're going to use a red jalapeno. Generally, the reason they have those is because they're fully ripe. This weighs exactly 2 and 1/4 oz. So, that's how much jalapeno we're using today. How much cilantro are we going to use? About the same. 1 oz of cilantro. Maybe a hair less because I'm not going to use the whole stems, but close enough. Let's get our big bowl over here and start chopping up some tomatillos. Here's the
thing that you'll see with the tomatillos. I am going to take out the core as well, but you can see the difference right here. You can see with a light. I'll get it up to this other overhead camera, too. Let's go ahead and and um dice it up. And you can see that the mat is a little more firm. So, I may have to dice it up a little different. So, you see how it's uh firm on the inside? It's not like the tomato. It doesn't fall apart quite as easy. I'm going to start dicing over here.
Again, friends, don't worry about being perfect. We're just doing something we love to do and enjoying the fruits of our flavor. Now, this is a juicy uh tomatillo, too, from what I can tell here. So, there we have it, friends. We have a big old diced raw somatio. So, I decided to use a red jalapeno mostly just to give this dish a little color. And I'm going to take a little bit of this. Give it a taste. Oo, where's my water? Right when I bit it, you know what? I got like a little hint
of sweet. It's a little sweeter than the green one, but it definitely has a little bit more bite as well than the green jalapeno. So, let's dice this one up, too. And once again, I'm not taking out the seeds or the veins, you know? I mean, if you want to take them out, you can. I think we definitely don't need more than one in here so that my wife can enjoy it as well. All right, we've got our jalapeno all diced up. Let's get it into the bowl here with our tomato. And, um, I probably should have put my
lime in. You know, one of the things I usually like to do is put the lime in early and the salt as soon as I get the tomatillo or tomatoes into the bowl because that way the salt can start dissolving and bringing out the flavor of the tomato or in this case tomatillos. But since we're going to let it rest about 30 minutes in the refrigerator anyway, it's okay. We've got tomato, we have jalapeno Colorado, and we have onions. All right, let's get the lime in here first so we can start juicing up our
tomato. My wife said a purple onion would probably go really good with this. I agree. That purple red color probably would look beautiful. See, we don't have green jalapeno in here, so that red really makes the dish pop. Makes it look really pretty because we eat with our eyes. That is true. All right, let's hope this thing has some juice in it. I can actually smell it on these. All right, let's go to the cilantro next. And we're going to chop it up a little bit of the stem. Not too much.
I like to get all the leaves in here. Yeah, I really don't like to waste anything. And I don't use the whole stem, but I do like to get a little bit in there. That cilantro smells so good. You know, again, if you don't like cilantro, I mean, if you're one of those folks that taste soap with cilantro, well, you know, you don't have to use it. There is no substitute for cilantro. None, nowhere ever that I've seen or found. You can use parsley, but it's a completely different flavor. Parsley is
more of a chim churi thing. All right, I think we've got it all chopped up pretty fine. I like that. Let's get it into the bowl here. All right, I'm going to give this a toss. Then we're going to give it a taste test and see if we need a little bit more lime or if it's okay like that. This is beautiful. It looks like a salad. Technically, it is, right? I mean, veggies, fruit, fruit. Maybe that's next. Let's put a little bit of this Celtic sea salt. Not quite as much. I'm going to say that's a half
a teaspoon. Right about there. Good enough. Beautiful tomato salsa cruda. See, if we would have used a green jalapeno, it would have got buried in there. And all you're going to see is a bunch of green. So, I do like Terry's idea of maybe some red onion and the red jalapeno. That gives it a little color and makes the dish pop a little bit nicer. Now, I don't see as much juice as I saw with the tomatoes. Remember, I showed you the firmness of the texture of the tomatillo. It doesn't have as much juice
as the tomatoes. And and these are definitely ripe. All right, I think I'm ready for the taste test. Voila. I have chips again. Cheers, my friends. M. Wow, it's good. Very good. For sure. Different, but still very, very good. That was just the right amount of salt. Trying to think how to describe the flavor here for y'all. I think maybe on my next chip I'll be able to tell. M. That's really, really good, my friends. I'm going to say it has like a hint of sweetness and then the tomato,
you know, it has a very subtle little tartness. It's not as tart as I thought it was going to be. I was expecting a little more tart considering we used almost a whole pound of tomatillos. But it's actually just delicious. It almost has like a even though the texture is firm, it feels a little creamy, if that makes any sense. That red jalapeno definitely has a bite. I can feel it burning my lips already. give me a good excuse to get a beer. Now, for our third pico, we're building it similar to the first one, but with
those couple of changes I mentioned, we're using 20 ounces of diced Roman tomatoes, 2 oz of red onion, aka seoya morada, two serrano peppers, which is about 1 and 1/8 of an ounce total, the juice of one juicy lime, and 2 oz of chopped cilantro with most of the stem removed. How many of you have ever had a sweet puo? Let's let that sit a little bit while we reveal the secret ingredient. Pineapple. Have you ever had pineapple in your pico deayo? Me neither, but I have had mango. I just couldn't find any mango right
now. It's just not the time of year. And so, we're just going to basically dice this up into little cubes. Also, pineapple. By the way, what's your favorite fruit? This is my favorite fruit of all time. pretty much have it in my house almost at all times. All right, friends. Let's weigh this pineapple. I am curious how much it weighs. This is 6 and 3/4 oz of fresh fresh pineapple. 6 and 3/4 oz. FYI. Time to add the pineapple to the pico deayo. This is the secret ingredient. Let's give this a little toss. We
already have our tomatoes in there. We have our onions in there. We have two serranos that taste like bell pepper in there. And we have our purple onion. And now we have cilantro. And la at last the secret ingredient, pineapple, baby. Look at that, my friends. That is a pineapple pico deayo salsauda ka. We've got it all tossed up. I would say it's time to give it the old taste test. Want to make sure I get a little bit of onion, a little bit of srano, a little bit of tomato, and a little bit of
pineapple. Beautiful chip full of pico deayo with pineapple. I need another bite. Look at all that juice. I like juice in my people. You do you and I'll do me. How's that? This gets a double excellent. The pineapple brings a great little freshness and it goes well with the whole dish. It's just really super good. Super excellent. Before we go, I'm going to give them one more taste test because this one's been sitting a little bit longer than the others. Let's give it a go.
Absolutely love that. That jalapeno got a little bite. It's good. Really good. All right, let's go over here to the tomato. A little bit of red jalapeno, a little bit of green tomato. Super good. Most excellent. One more bite. I'll make sure I get some pineapple in here and tomato. There it is. Oops. All three of them incredibly good. I would highly, highly recommend you give all three of these a try. I have to say this was very very impressive. My favorite today is the pineapple one. I'm
going to start making that a lot more often. Man, it just balances so well with the pico. Now, you can find my spices, the wow, the OG, the boom, the rice, and the big OG and soon to come a big wow two pounders as well as my cookbook at arneys asadaavada.com. I'm going to eat me some more pico deayo after my little danc. They're all that good cuz they're super delicious. But today, my favorite is the pineapple cut. Cut. Cut. Cut.