Aside from loving the wonderful condiment salsa negra, a recipe like this is extra special for putting a lot of the pieces of preserving throughout the year together. Homegrown garlic, transformed into black garlic– a post-growing season fall tradition of ours, a collection of dried peppers and smoked peppers saved from the garden, and homemade vinegar from your local fruit- all come together to make the best sauce that goes with everything from roasted chicken to ramen broth.

From a home-preserver perspective it feels disingenuous to recommend quantities of anything (You can read meander thoughts on that here if you want). It really should be based part on your taste preference and part on what amounts you have around to use. But the process is as follows:

In a skillet warm a couple glugs of oil. Add a handful of black garlic and a couple handfuls of your various dried peppers- as many hot ones as you want your salsa to be hot. If you want to include some tomato paste to add some sweetness, by all means. Some folks here will simply add a pinch of sugar, or nothing at all. Carefully warm until everything is soft and fragrant.

Transfer all the contents to a food processor or whatever your preferred mashing technique is. Add salt to taste and a dollop of vinegar to liven everything up, and puree. Store in a jar for however long it lasts.

While I wanted to get this recipe out in the monthly newsletter now in September to get folks planning for winter, as I scavenge my cupboards it seems I finished last winter’s salsa negra before I got to take a picture of the final product! But let’s be honest, “blogging” is blah, it’s the sharing of useful meaningful information that keeps our hands busy doing non-internet things that’s important- not ruining the moments of our lives by taking too many pictures! Damn last year’s salsa negra was good!