Green cherry tomatoes and avocado make the most delicious fresh salsa! This mild salsa is all about the fresh zingy flavors and makes an amazing topping for tacos or other Mexican dishes.
When life gives you green tomatoes, make salsa!
In the summer I love to stock up on packs of cherry and baby plum tomatoes that have all the different colors in them. This recipe came from the need to make lots of salsas while testing my black bean recipe and eating nonstop tacos for dinner… those were good days!
Green tomatoes are so at home in Mexican style cuisine, where tomatillos are commonly used for sauces. The green tomatoes here aren’t the same as tomatillos though. They aren’t under-ripe, they’re just naturally green plum cherry tomatoes. This salsa really looks the part with soft avocado, juicy tomato, fresh cilantro and tiny specks of red onion, but flavor wise it’s juicy and sweet and more in line with a pico de gallo than a tomatillo based green salsa.
The addition of avocado makes this a kind of salsa / guacamole hybrid and it works well as a topping for tacos or any other Mexican dishes, where the simple flavors serve as a cooling / acidic contrast to richer spicier dishes. While I primarily intended this salsa to be used in this way, it can also make a great dip (consider adding some extra flavors to it – I have more to say about this in the next section!)
Top Tips & Ingredient Notes
- I’m using green plum cherry tomatoes here which I quarter. This will work exactly the same way with green cherry tomatoes or green baby heirlooms. If you want to use large green tomatoes, go for it, just core, de-seed and dice them. (For those in the UK – my green tomatoes come in the boxes I order from Isle of Wight tomatoes.)
- Your avocado should ideally be ripe enough that it’s really soft and melty – but not so ripe that it turns to guacamole. Which can be hard. Avocados are divas at the best of times. Just do your best!
- Do you have a tricky time chopping your onion into uniform and teeny tiny pieces? Me too. I now use a vegetable chopper and it’s a game changer. I run the fresh cilantro (coriander) through it too.
- If you don’t have lime, feel free to use lemon.
- If you’re making this as a dip, you may want to add some more “stuff” to amp up the flavor: chopped green chili, a tiny bit of minced garlic, a couple pinches of dried cumin or a guacamole seasoning mix. You can also chop all of the pieces a little smaller to make it more dip-able.
Make a meal with this salsa
If making your salsa from scratch was as much effort as you had to give for dinner today, please know that you can serve this with some simple cheese quesadillas or cheese tostadas and call it a day.
If you have a little more time, pair the salsa with any of these Mexican style recipes.
Green Tomato Salsa
Ingredients
- 6 oz (170 g) green cherry tomatoes, quartered
- 1 large avocado, cubed
- 2 tbsp finely diced red onion
- Juice of 1/2 lime
- 3-4 tbsp finely chopped cilantro (fresh coriander)
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix. Grind in a generous amount of salt and pepper until it's seasoned to your liking. Serve immediately, or store in the fridge for a couple of days (see notes).
