How to Make Fruit Salsa

Featured Pro: Sam Talbot
Category: Cooking
Time: 3:12


SAM TALBOT: So today we’re talking salsa – not just your basic everyday, you know, jalapeno-tomato-cilantro salsa. We’re talking about one of my favorites – fruit salsas.

I love to take fresh fruit, you know, end of summer season, when stone fruit are just bursting. So all you want to do is take your peach, set it down, and basically you’re just going to both sides, just cut off perfect little circles like that. So we’re going take these guys right into our bowl, a touch of salt, quick splash of olive oil, a little cracked black pepper. You’ve always got to remember to season everything.

Okay, so now we have our peaches and the olive oil, flesh-side down, get them nice and coated. We’re just going to pick them up one by one. We’re going to set them right on – you know, not on the hottest spot, but a little indirect heat there. So you just want to let them sit and cook. It usually takes about 45 to about a minute and a half.

All right, so let’s check out our fruit here. One of the tricks you’re looking for is that you’ll see the enzyme here actually start to curl up a little bit, get nice and charred. That’s what you’re looking for. And that’s a good sign. Yeah, it’s a good sign that you’re ready to go. So we’re going to go right back under our cutting board. You see those nice grill marks?

So now we’re going to go back to our original piece of fruit. We’re going to cut off the ends. And, just to contrast the different textures that are in the salsa, we’re going to do a little bit of raw and a little bit of the charred. So we’re going to go back. We’re going to cut this down, just a nice rough chop. There’s no real rhyme or reason, you know. So we have our raw fruit. Now we’re going to dice up our beautiful charred fruit. You can tell it’s a little bit mushier, but that’s all right. It just makes it look more of a sauce consistency.

Then we’re just going to build our salsa. So what I like to do is take some fresh herbs – mint, scallion, basil, a little jalapeno for heat. We’re going to take a little diced jalapeno in there, a little more; a touch of fresh scallion, chopped up cilantro, some fresh mint. Then we’re just going to add a little bit more charred fruit that we did a little bit earlier – charred peaches, charred nectarines, fresh plum in there, all nice and grilled, and then some more raw fruit; a quick pinch of salt, cracked black pepper, quick splash of olive oil. The fresh herbs are really bringing out the natural flavors here. The olive oil has helped just moistening up just ever so lightly.

I whipped up a piece of salmon and a nice bison steak here. I’m just going to show you how beautiful and easy it is to really elevate just a natural piece of protein like this. So we’re just going to fold this right on top there. You can already see just how beautiful that looks. And it took us, what, five minutes to make it? It’s healthy, fast, delicious. We’re going to put some on our beautifully grilled bison steak here.

Look how beautiful that looks. The smoke really infuses into that fruit. There’s the raw texture. There’s the cooked texture, the fresh herbs, the jalapeno. It’s so cool how something so simple can really help elevate all of your home-cooked meals.