For all the sophisticated thinking that goes into pairing a wine, salsas and the plates that they top, drench, and are dotted onto deserve at least the same scrutiny.
Like wines, the main salsa division is a dyad of color: reds made from tomatoes and greens from tomatillos, their tart, chartreuse-hued cousins. The extra ingredients added in and the ways to prepare them are countless. Salsas can be fried, boiled, roasted, toasted, or raw. They can be rough chopped, precisely diced, or blitzed in a blender until smooth. Chilis, which can bring zip, smoke, a low-rumbling heat, or eye-popping spice, are key: every salsa has at least one.
Served in a stone molcajete or a ramekin, different salsas in a set are the custom on the counter at Mexico’s taquerías. Alongside a menu of meats – from juicy cuts of beef to thinly sliced pork – what makes for a marriage?
“For me, there are no rules. It’s a question of preferences,” says Juan Tinajero, who’s been making the salsas at MICHELIN Bib Gourmand Taquería Los Consentidos del Barrio in Mexico City for more than 30 years.
Each morning at the smoky and bustling no-frills spot, Tinajero prepares four classic recipes: a red blended with three different dried chiles; a mellow, avocado-y green; a pico de gallo style called la Mexicana; and the salsa especial, a combination of all three.
Each salsa pulls its dish in a different direction. The red is the hottest, adding a kick that smartens up its meat counterpart. The green packs extra acid. La Mexicana brings freshness. The especial, fried to a terracotta color, is wonderfully complex.
Tinajero doesn’t like to pick favorites. Still, with decades of experience comes some worthwhile advice.
Los Consentidos’s chuleta taco, for instance, piled high with minced char-marked pork chop, is lean and clear-cut. Tinajero recommends the salsa Mexicana – made simply with raw tomato, onion, cilantro, serrano chili, and salt – spooned on top. “The juices of the salsa Mexicana complement it well so it’s not as dry,” he says.
At MICHELIN Bib Gourmand El Vilsito in Mexico City, the kitchen points diners in a different direction for another pork favorite. The taco al pastor, a citywide signature made with a chili-vinegar marinated pork, is best matched by their salsa made with chile morita, Brenda Hernández shares over the buzz of the dinner rush.
An auto repair shop during the day, by 6 p.m. at El Vilsito, the busted cars and tool parts have been swapped out for tables and chairs. Three spits of pastor meat spinning slowly out front announce the specialty here like barber’s poles.
The tea saucer-sized taco comes with shredded cilantro, onions, and a square of pineapple thrown on. The sweetness from the marinade and the fruit do well with some balancing, Hernández says.
The morita salsa, made here with tomatillo, onion, garlic, cinnamon, and the eponymous chili, is “a bit acidic, but it’s not spicy,” she says. “It’s more like sweet and sour.”
Alexis Ayala, the chef behind MICHELIN Bib Gourmand Tacos Los Alexis, highlights the value add from an acidic salsa as well.
At this cool kid taquería set apart by savvy gourmet touches (Ayala also runs Pargot next door, an upscale Bib Gourmand restaurant), that’s found in the green, a thin blend of raw tomatillo, avocado, habanero, onion, garlic, coriander, and lime.
For the taurino taco, an umami bomb of salted beef, chicharrón, and longaniza sausage, green is the go-to.
“You help the taco because the acidity is going to cut the fattiness,” Ayala says. “And the creaminess of the avocado with the tomatillos, it goes better with the flavor of the taurino, which is more intense because of the combination of proteins.”
But Ayala has a soft spot for his red salsa, too, from a family recipe dating back four generations of burnt tomatoes, prickly pear, nuts, onion, garlic, and chilis. To eat his tender carne asada beef taco, Ayala goes one stripe red, one stripe green, and a squeeze of lime.
“When it comes to cooking, there are no rules. But on the subject of tacos, it becomes religion for Mexicans,” Ayala says.
“People have their own favorites, even though they may not be the best. It has to do with how you grew up, the memories that you have tied to them,” he says.
Hero image: Tacos Los Alexis
